Turn of the Century
by VaisleyCorner
Summary: It's been several years after the final defeat of Lord Voldemort and it's a time of peace in the magical world, but not everyone can leave behind the wounds of the past.
1. Chapter 1- Four Years

"Harry! Ginny!" Hermione excitedly leaped toward them through the doorway as they opened the door to their flat, wrapping an arm around each of them, hugging them tightly and not letting go. "Happy Christmas!"

"If you three are done now, I wouldn't mind getting out of this blizzard. You know, at your earliest convenience, but maybe before we open presents tomorrow morning?"

Hermione quickly turned around with a smile and flushed pink for a moment when she saw Ron standing there, holding bags of Christmas gifts and getting completely snow covered.

"Sorry, I just can't wait to see their new flat!" She said excitedly.

Much to Ron's relief, he and Hermione were finally let inside. The recently married Harry and Ginny had just moved into their flat a few weeks before Christmas, and, as Aurors and professional Quidditch players are not typically loaded with free time, didn't get a chance to decorate or unpack very much. Among the unpacked boxes though they did manage to hang some garland and holly here and there, and there was a large, half-decorated Christmas tree in the corner by the fireplace.

"I really like what you've done with the place. Very cozy." Ron grinned as he set down the gifts.

"I'm glad you like it. We constantly strive for your approval, Ron." Ginny rolled her eyes at her brother before nudging Harry in the side.

"Oh, right… Do you guys want something to drink?" Harry asked politely.

"Just some tea." Hermione replied.

"Firewhiskey for me, thanks." Ron said as he hung up his coat and brushed the snow out of his hair.

Harry went to get them their drinks while the other three got settled in and sat in the living room. Hermione sat down across from Ginny, who watched curiously as Ron sat down on the opposite end of the couch from her. Hermione noticed her friend's quizzical look and quickly shuffled to the other end to be next to her boyfriend, taking his hand in hers. Ginny watched as Hermione interlaced her fingers with Ron's and noticed that, still, there were no rings on either of their hands.

Ginny's thoughts wandered some, thinking about their relationship as Hermione filled her in on life in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. They had been together for several years now, since the end of the war like her and Harry. She wondered if things were going as well as they made it seem, or if things were perfectly fine and they didn't want to get married at all, which was the total opposite of what she and her brother had talked about in the past. She knew for a fact that Ron wanted a wife, kids, and the big family, but it was never something that Hermione brought up to her. These thoughts left her as Harry returned with their drinks and sat next to her, the conversation quickly turning to Ginny's latest Quidditch match.

Christmas together became their tradition since the end of the war. At the very least it was always the four of them, but other friends and family would sometimes pop in here and there over the years. It was this time last year when they last saw Neville. Once he decided he wanted to train to become Hogwarts' next Herbology professor and things between he and Hannah Abbott got serious they saw less of him than they liked, but still stayed in touch by owl. This year it would just be the four of them, except for much of the evening it felt more like it was just the three of them. No matter how much Hermione, or anyone, tried to get Ron more involved in the conversation, he rarely got out more than a few words at a time, even with the help of the Firewhiskey.

Several hours after dinner, where they all ate and drank way too much, and stayed up well past midnight, Hermione found herself in the kitchen in her slippers and a heavy fleece robe, the room dimly lit by two small blue flames that she charmed to follow just behind and above her.

"You've always had a knack for the Bluebell charm."

"Harry!" Hermione jumped, almost hitting her head on the cupboard door. "You scared me…"

"Sorry… You couldn't sleep either?"

She shook her head and pulled out some leftover dessert grabbing a fork for each of them. She handed it to Harry and sat at the counter.

"Are you too excited for presents in the morning?" He asked with a grin, but when he noticed she barely acknowledged him, he knew what it really was. He had noticed the near-absence of his best friend earlier in the evening. "Is it Ron?"

She sat in silence for a moment, picking at the cake before her, only occasionally bringing a tiny morsel to her mouth. She looked at Harry with worried eyes and nodded.

"I…" She started, but couldn't find the right words, and instead took another bite of cake.

"Did you guys have a fight or something before you came over?"

"No, but that's what worries me." She saw the confused look on his face and continued. "We don't fight anymore. At all. About anything." She sighed and looked down and began picking at her food again. "I know that it sounds mad, but I miss having a row with him every once in a while about the stupidest, little things..." She smiled softly before it faded again. "But now… It almost feels like he's going through the motions."

"Maybe he's finally learned to accept that you're just right about everything."

"If only…" She managed a small laugh. "It's not just that though. He's not sleeping well. He spends all night on the roof of my building just…" Her restrained frustration showed as she stabbed at the next bit of cake a little harder than she needed to. "I don't even know what he's doing! At first, I went with him, thinking he was being romantic, but it was almost like I wasn't even there. I would stay with him as long as I could manage before I got too cold or it was too late. But he would just stay there, laying on the roof for hours, well after I've fallen asleep. I asked him why, once, but he changed the topic and..."

She took a moment to calm herself down again. She was happy to finally vent about this to someone, but at the same time she was so frustrated she could barely contain herself. They were silent for a moment before Harry spoke.

"He did say something to me," Harry began. "maybe a few months ago, and I really didn't think much of it at the time..."

"What was it?" He now had her full attention. She sat upright in her chair, reminiscent of her days at Hogwarts during any lesson.

"Well, I think he's… bored?" He saw she was expecting more of an answer and tried to explain himself. "I mean, that's oversimplifying it a bit, but he asked me if I missed any of it. If I missed the war or when we were at Hogwarts and in constant danger."

"Well, what did you tell him?" Hermione replied, rather impatiently.

"I told him he has to be mad to miss all of that… Well, I didn't know he might have actually been serious!" He quickly added in his own defense after seeing the look on Hermione's face. "I mean, why would anyone miss any of that?"

"Well, it's not the most bizarre thing to miss…" Hermione slumped in her chair a little. "I kind of missed it for a bit. I just mean that it was hard readjusting. We spent seven years having anything but a normal childhood. It was hard to move on, and maybe… I mean, it's been a few years now, but maybe Ron never did? Maybe that's why he didn't want to go work at the shop with George?"

"Yeah, maybe…"

They continued talking until the last of the cake was gone before they both decided to go back to bed for what little time there was before the sun would come up. Harry slid into bed completely unnoticed, thanks to Ginny's innate ability to sleep like a knocked out troll. Hermione slipped into bed beside Ron, getting as close as she could to him before placing an arm over his chest. He woke up easily, so she coaxed him into falling asleep again by gently stroking his hair. Hermione stayed awake the rest of the night, thinking about what Harry had told her until she heard Ginny running down the hallway to start opening presents.


	2. Chapter 2- I Don't Know What To Do

"How's he doing?"

"Better some days. We did have a fight last night about the correct and incorrect ways to shred Boomslang skin for potions, so..." Hermione smiled at Harry before slumping into the chair at her desk in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, feeling defeated. "I've tried getting him to talk to me since we spoke at Christmas a few months ago, and he's stopped spending so much time on the roof, but… he is just so stubborn sometimes. It feels like the harder I try the more he shuts himself off. It's infuriating."

"I wish I could be more help, but I barely see him most of the time. When I do it's just in passing since he got this new case he's been working on for a while." He noticed the vacant expression on Hermione's face and continued. "Might have something to do with the basilisk tail growing out of his forehead… and the way his hair's turned to gillyweed is really just terrible."

"Yeah, sure…" Hermione replied lazily.

"Hermione!"

She was jarred from her thoughts and quickly sat upright.

"Sorry, it's just that there's something else he's been doing and… I'm really getting worried, Harry."

"What is it?"

"Well, it started around New Years. We were at my parents in Australia and, you shared a room with him for 7 years so you know how he talks in his sleep sometimes?"

"Yeah, we both do. Used to drive Seamus mad." Harry nodded.

"Well," she continued slowly "we were sleeping, and he woke me up when he started sleep-talking. Nothing out of the ordinary, but," With a flick of her wand she shut the door to her very small office and continued in a hushed tone. "He started moving like he was trying to pull something off of him. And then he was having trouble breathing, and I could only make out a little before he startled himself awake, but he kept saying, over and over, 'brain… get off...'"

She motioned downward, and in the general direction of the Department of Mysteries, giving him a knowing look. Harry flashed back to their battle there in their fifth year and remembered Ron getting entangled in the tentacles of one of the brains from the Brain Room that night. They both knew that anything involving the Department of Mysteries had the possibility of having the Taboo curse placed on it, so they both had to be vague whenever discussing that day.

"Maybe it was just a nightmare. I mean, I've had loads of them ever since the end of the war, but Ginny's helped me a lot with them." Harry offered hopefully.

"But it's been going on for months, and-"

"Ready for lunch?" Suddenly the door flung open and Ron appeared before them. "Oh. Hey Harry. Didn't know you were going to be here too... Are you coming to lunch with us?"

Harry looked at Hermione for guidance. He caught her eye and could tell she wanted to keep talking to him, but couldn't.

"Yes. Of course he is." She smiled at Ron. "I was trying to surprise you, Ron, since you've both said you hardly get to see each other lately. Wasn't I, Harry?"

"Oh, err, yeah. Of course. Your choice Ron. Where do you want to go?"

The trio made their way out of the ministry for lunch. Harry stood behind the other two and watched them closely. At first, Ron seemed like his usual, normal self until after they ate when he slowly became distant to them and overcompensated when he would realize it. Hermione was acting similarly, like a much more exaggerated version of herself, trying to hide that something was wrong. Harry tried to turn off his Auror training for lunch but couldn't quite do it. The entire time while they walked, ate, talked, and walked back to the office and up until they went their separate ways he was studying them and came to the worrying conclusion that they were both trying too hard to act like themselves.


	3. Chapter 3- All At Once

It was a sweltering summer night. Hermione and Ron lay sleeping peacefully beneath a thin sheet in the bedroom of her London flat. Although Ron had his own place on the outskirts of London, where there was a bit more fresh air, the two spent enough time at hers that they might as well live together in her place. It had been a few weeks since the trio had gone to lunch together and things between her and Ron seemed to be getting better. The night terrors he had been experiencing were fewer but still happened frequently enough to worry Hermione.

As the small hand on the clock on the wall ticked closer to the three, Ron began to stir. He rolled onto his side, facing Hermione, and mumbled something under his breath just loud enough to make her wake up a little. She moved towards him and slipped an arm over him so she could sleepily rub his back and soothe him back to sleep, which had become her automatic response to his sleep mumbling. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. This time it did and Ron seemed to calm down and they were both back to sleep, a slight sweat on each of their brows, without ever realizing that they had even woken up.

The small hand on the clock inched closer to the five, and Hermione shivered and pulled the sheet tighter against herself. She was so cold that her teeth were chattering and she couldn't stop shivering. As she rolled over to move closer to Ron's warmth she felt something wet on her face. She sleepily brushed it off. She felt it a second time and brushed it off again. It took two more times before it was enough to wake her up. She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes, her body still feeling the effects of the freezing cold air around her. When she finally opened her eyes wide enough and looked around her she gasped.

"S- s-sn- Snow?" She barely uttered through chattering teeth as her whole body shivered. She looked around and there was a light dusting of snow throughout the room. Above her, she saw thin, wispy clouds swirling above her as the tiny snowflakes fell upon her face. Reaching for her wand, she grabbed it off the nightside table.

"F-f-f-fin… Finite Incantatem." The snow stopped falling almost instantly and the freezing air had begun to warm slightly. She rubbed her arms to attempt to warm herself up a little when she heard Ron, mumbling something incoherently in his sleep. She leaned closer to him to try and hear what he was saying, but just then she felt it again. Another snowflake landed on her bare arm as her skin got goosebumps from a new blast of cold air moving against her, a thin tank top for a hot summer night doing nothing to keep her warm. There were new clouds above her, same as the first ones. Looking back at Ron, she had finally figured out why there was snow in the first place.

"R-r-ron…" She shook him a little bit. "You have to w-wake up…" She shook him again, a little harder this time, but apprehensively.

"Ron!" She all but shouted at him, finally forcing him to wake up and sit upright. She looked up and the cloud disappeared and the air once again began to warm just a little bit. She wrapped her arms around him, but was still shivering, not at all dressed for the arctic tundra Ron was inadvertently creating in his sleep. She pulled him tighter, both for warmth and out of worry.

"You're d-doing it again, Ron." She waved her wand to light the room and motioned to the dusting of snow covering every inch of it, including the bed. "W-wandless magic. In your sleep."

"What? I…" Finally completely awake, Ron looked around. Just as he realized how cold his skin felt, he could see the snow all around him. He saw his wand on his nightside table, also covered in completely undisturbed snow. He felt Hermione still shaking next to him. Picking up his wand he summoned them both their own blanket from across the room. He wrapped one around Hermione first before wrapping up himself too.

"Sorry, Hermione." He stifled a yawn. "I'll clean it up. Evanesco." The snow was gone, vanished into nothing by his spell, but the bed sheets were damp from whatever had melted on top of them, and the air was still freezing.

He looked around, intentionally avoiding Hermione's gaze, knowing for a fact that she was going to want to talk about this, and also knowing for a fact that talking about it was the last thing he wanted to do. He knew something was going on with him. He knew Hermione knew. She even tried to get him to open up about it a few times, and he almost did, but something was holding him back. Life was simpler for him when his life and lives of the people around him were in constant mortal danger. What to do next and how to do it was the easy part. He never had time to stop and think about himself or his own needs and emotions. This was especially true in such a large family. As the second youngest, he was frequently left on his own to figure that out, and it was always easier for him to just ignore it all. He learned to use the shroud of constant threats surrounding him to distract himself from whatever was bothering him and eventually he would feel better. That was a difficult way of life when the woman he loved for nearly half his life wore her emotions on her sleeve.

He knew they had been silent for a long time and that soon she would want answers and he didn't really have them. She would go completely mad if she knew he was suddenly sleeping better because of the small bottle of Sleeping Draught he had been taking almost every night. If only he could have made it through one night without it, he could have brewed another batch and this never would have happened. He could feel a pit in his stomach the more he thought about it. That pit kept growing until finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He saw the clock read almost six in the morning. He saw his way out.

"I guess it's a little early to get ready for work, so how about I make us some breakfast?" He smiled at her as if nothing at all had happened and slid out of bed, pulled on his robe, and was almost out of the room when he heard her.

"What!?" Hermione was completely flabbergasted, shaking her head in disbelief. "Breakfast!? How can you possibly be thinking of breakfast right now?"

"Oh, come on, Hermione. It's not a big deal-"

"How can you say that? My toes," She pulled her feet out from the blanket to show them to him. "Are still completely numb, and they've almost turned blue! I'm lucky I didn't get hypothermia, that neither of us did!"

"We're both fine! It was just a little snow. It's not like I set the rug on fire-" He cut himself off, wincing, and immediately regretting what he had said. He tried to recover, but it was too late.

"No, Ron, you didn't do that this time. That happened while Charlie was visiting when you very nearly burned down The Burrow!" Hermione was on her feet now and breathing heavily, still several feet away from Ron. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She knew if things escalated further that Ron would just retreat and bury his feelings deeper than he already had. When she was ready, she stepped toward him, wrapped her still-cool hands around his warm one, and looked into his eyes, pleading.

"Ron. I love you. So, please, just talk to me." She gave his hand a slight squeeze as she looked up at him. She could read him so well. She saw the torment inside of him. She knew there was part of him that wanted to talk about it, but there was also the part of him that would rather pretend none of this ever happened and would just like to move on. She thought, maybe, he would grow out of that as he got older, but she was still waiting for it. Perhaps she always would be.

"Okay. Fine..."

"Thank you." Hermione felt a huge relief wash over her and she pulled him down into a brief kiss before getting right down to business. "So, I've been doing some research into-"

"Well, maybe not right now?" He interrupted. "I mean, I haven't been able to stop thinking about breakfast and I'm starving." He let out a weak laugh, knowing what he was about to say would probably not go over well. "How about we talk tonight?"

With those words, Hermione immediately dropped his hand and took a step back from him.

"No. Not this time. That won't work this time." She could feel her heart beginning to race. It was taking all of her effort to not grab her wand and hex him right this instant. "That has worked far too many times than I would like to admit. You will not make me think we will finally talk, and then it never comes up until something like this happens again. You are doing WANDLESS magic in your sleep, Ron! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?! It's one thing when it's a child making their toys levitate, or their hair change color, but this…We can't keep ignoring this!"

Hermione's fear came true. She was so hurt and worried that her frustration took over and she escalated the conversation to one where she was trying to plead with him, but it came off as yelling at him. She didn't mean to, but years of trying to help him open up to her when things got really tough felt like they were all for nothing in that moment. She briefly remembered telling Harry at Christmas how she missed the little fights she would have with Ron, never about anything too serious and neither of them ever walked away feeling hurt. But now, whenever they actually did fight, it was almost too painful for her to bear. She knew what was coming next. She braced herself.

The fight went exactly how she thought it would. She pleaded with him to just be honest with her and to let her in so she could help him. He deflected and retreated further into himself. It went back and forth for over an hour until, finally, they were both too exhausted from going in circles and having the same arguments over and over again. Ron eventually left, claiming he forgot his Shield Cloak at his place and he needed it for a raid before he stepped out the front door and apparated away. The second the door closed, Hermione wanted to just collapse in a heap and cry, but she was so emotionally exhausted from their fight that she didn't even have the energy to do that.

Her mind shut down and she drifted around her flat, getting ready for work in a total haze until all she had to do was her hair. It was then that she heard a knock on the door. Her heart froze, and she begged to Merlin that it wasn't Ron. She didn't want to keep fighting. Her heart resumed beating again when she heard her younger coworker's voice.

"Miss Granger? Are you home, Miss Granger?"

"Hello, Mona." Hermione opened the door and feigned a smile at her. She had explained to Mona numerous times that she could just call her Hermione. She wasn't that much older than Mona, and she wasn't even her boss, just her mentor, but still, she continued to do it, and Hermione was too exhausted to try and explain it to her again.

"Err… Good Morning, Miss Granger." Mona was caught off guard at the sight of her mentor's bushy brown hair being an unkempt and tangled mess. Hermione had gotten good at taming it over the years, so this was quite the shock for Mona. "Are… you ready to go? We have the meeting with the wizards from Luxembourg today and you said they like to do things the muggle way, so you wanted me to pick you up this morning at precisely eight o'clock so we could take a taxi to the meeting. Is that still what you would like to do today, Miss Granger?"

"Yes, Mona," Hermione replied lazily as she summoned her bag and shut the door behind them. She caught sight of herself in her reflection in a piece of artwork hanging in the hallway of her building. With a flick of her wand, her hair was once again manageable and under control. She did her best to push down what had happened with Ron, but every second her mind wasn't on her work, it was on him. Mona provided a nice distraction for their ride to her meeting, but she couldn't help but wonder when this day would end.


	4. Chapter 4- How Do You Go On?

"What are they going to do, Harry?"

"I don't know, GInny. I've seen them fight, loads of times, but this is different. It's been weeks since they saw each other." Harry stood in the doorway between their bedroom and the bathroom and shrugged.

"Yeah…" Ginny remembered what she was thinking about them at Christmas." Do you think part of why Ron's been so off lately because they aren't married yet? Or even engaged? I mean, it's been years and I know Ron wants to do the whole routine with marriage, kids, a house just a little too small for them, like how we grew up. He always has. I'm sure she knows that, doesn't she?"

"I can't see how she doesn't, he's never hidden that from anyone. Maybe she doesn't want any of that stuff. Maybe she's happy being with just him?"

Harry came back into their bedroom after he finished brushing his teeth. He looked at Ginny, already laying in bed with no makeup, an old t-shirt, and her hair up in a messy bun. He smiled at her.

"I'm happy just being with you." He slid into bed with her and grinned. "But I'm also happy just being your husband." He inched closer to her and was now laying on his side, propped up on one arm next to her and another hand on her stomach. "And I'm also happy just being the father to your children."

"Children? Let's start with child, singular, first, then go from there." Ginny laughed and then smiled at him. "Maybe… we can start trying after the season is over? When I'll be home more often and not on the pitch six days a week."

"Yeah. That sounds like a fantastic plan. After the season…. But that doesn't mean we can't get in some practice," Harry slid his hand down from her stomach to in between her thighs. "in the meantime."

"Oh, come on." Ginny rolled her eyes at him and burst out in laughter. "That was the worst attempt to seduce me you've ever made." She quickly pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips before pressing her lips hard against his, kissing him passionately. "Doesn't mean it didn't work."

Ginny pulled her shirt off over her head and tossed it to the other side of the room, and the young married couple spent some time practicing before finally falling asleep.

The next morning Harry woke up a little sore and half hanging off the bed while Ginny was stepping out of the shower and picking up their conversation from last night as if nothing had happened between then and now.

"Harry?" Ginny's voice was full of concern and doubt. "What if they don't work things out?"


	5. Chapter 5- Pass Me By

During the weeks after their fight, Hermione completely threw herself into her work. She got to her office at the Ministry by five in the morning and often stayed as late as midnight. She didn't leave her desk for lunch and when Harry did try to have lunch with her one day, Mona, always a fierce advocate for her mentor, wouldn't let him pass. He did not want to test her after hearing about the Horn Tongue Hex she put on the last person to barge in on one of Hermione's meetings without being on the attendee list. Harry and Ginny tried to visit her at her flat at different times, and once they caught her just as she was getting home. They left unsatisfied, unable to even get through the door, and all they were able to get out of her were half-answers and generic replies.

Ron, surprisingly, did the same thing. He threw himself into his work to release his frustrations with himself. He took it on himself to track down a dark witch that went by Snyde, her last name, with extreme force. She had been eluding them for some time, but eventually, Ron was able to find her and, in a fierce duel, capture her as well. In a surprise to the entire department, Snyde had to be taken to St. Mungo's for treatment before she could be properly processed. When Harry heard about this he knew something was terribly wrong with his best friend. It wasn't until Ron found himself mucking through a storm drain in Cardiff, chasing down and throwing curses at a young, inexperienced wizard very fond of the regurgitating toilet jinx, that he realized he had lost control. An Auror, as skilled as himself, spending three days chasing down an anti-muggle prankster like this was complete overkill, and the way he had sent Snyde to St. Mungo's made him sick to his stomach. Without a second thought, he left the young wizard alone and apparated back to the Ministry, where his boss was waiting for him with a stern look on his face and a sealed roll of parchment paper.

On the same night it was nearly one in the morning when Hermione finally returned home for the night. She reached the top of the steps to her floor and smelled something awful. Looking ahead, she stared at the scene before her, wondering if it was real or just her overworked and overtired mind finally falling into delirium. She approached slowly.

"Ron?" She said hesitantly as she flicked her wand. "Lumos." She could see him better now and was certain it was him. He was asleep, sitting propped up against the wall next to her door. Her mind raced with why he was there and what she should do next. _If I wake him up, what if we have another fight? What if it's worse this time? What if I don't wake him up and he does something in his sleep again?_ She knew what she had to do and crouched down in front of him.

"Ronald?" She gently pushed back his long red hair from his face and smiled, her fingers gently playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. It was almost unbelievable to her how much loved him, and how much she missed him. "Ron? You have to wake up, love."

"Wha…" Ron slowly woke up and saw Hermione just inches away from his face. The feel of her fingers playing with his hair made his skin tingle. He enjoyed the tender moment before remembering why he was there. "Hermione? I-"

"Let's go inside. Maybe get you a shower?" She smiled softly at him. As sweet and tender as their moment in the hallway felt, Hermione could feel her anxiousness bubbling to the surface. As much as she wanted things to be back to normal, she wasn't going to ignore what had happened between them. She walked towards the bathroom with him.

"Hermione, wait…" Ron placed a hand on her shoulder before she could get too far. "Can we talk first? I mean, I know I smell, but I need to say something to you before I can't."

"Yes, of course." Hermione was caught off guard by this and walked with him back to the living room and she sat down on the couch. Ron sat on the love seat across from her.

They sat there in silence for a minute or two, maybe even longer. Time felt to be stretched out to its absolute limits as she waited for him to speak. She could burst at any moment with a torrent of words and a speech she had been practicing in her head every second of the day after their fight, but this was his moment. She wouldn't take that away from him, even as she watched his conflicted mind raging on behind his cool facade.

Ron had practiced his speech for hours before he fell asleep outside her door. He knew everything he wanted to say to her but it wouldn't come out. It felt like hours since they sat down, but it had been considerably less. Finally, he found the courage to start.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Hermione. I'm really sorry. I've been such a bloody git to you lately, and I'm sorry. I just- I-" Ron didn't know what happened to make him stop. He was on a roll. He felt himself finally opening up about everything he had been feeling over the last several years that had all been building up inside of him. He was ready and he wanted to tell her everything, but something was making him hold back. Something crept up from the depths of his consciousness to stop him, to poison his mind, and it worked, just like it had time and time again over the years. His entire demeanor suddenly changed. He slumped back into the couch and looked down at his hands. He felt all of his worst fears washing over him until he was almost completely drowned by them. He didn't see a point in going on with what he was saying to her. He wasn't good enough for her before, and he definitely wasn't now, especially after getting demoted to a desk job because of his erratic behavior at work. He couldn't do this. He got up to leave.

"I... I think I'll just go. All this? Me? Not worth your time."

"Ron, wait!" Hermione jumped off the sofa and grabbed his arm before he could get very far. She stood before him and cupped his face in her hands, her eyes filled with tears. She knew if this was the end, she was going to put up a fight. She could barely manage to get the words out, but she spoke confidently.

"You don't get to decide that. I do. I made that decision years ago, and not a day has gone by that I've thought it wasn't the right one." She choked back her tears as best she could, but it did little good as her emotions overwhelmed her. "You are worth every piece of me."

Ron's tormented, conflicted mind was once again beginning to calm down a little as he listened to Hermione's plea. The waters of his mind that threatened to drown him to a point of no return began to recede as he thought about their time together that summer. It was just enough for him to feel like he was in control of himself again, just a little. He, more effectively than Hermione was able to, choked back his feelings as he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace.

"I love you, too, Hermione."

"I know…" A slight smile curled across her lips. They stayed there and held each other, not saying anything. There would be work to do and it would take a long time, but for right now they could just be together.

"Ron?"

"Yeah?"

"You smell absolutely terrible!" She laughed, for the first time in over a week, before she pulled away from him and covered her nose.

She forced Ron to finally take a shower. While he was showering, Hermione changed into an old t-shirt and shorts. She used a few spells to quickly wash his clothes for him. She felt something in one of his pockets, so she reached in and pulled out a small potions vial. Curious, she took the stopper out and smelled it. There was something familiar about it but she couldn't figure out what it was. She didn't think much of it though, Aurors frequently used various potions in their line of work, and she put it back in his pocket as she heard the shower turn off.

Ron got dressed, pulling out some old clothes from a drawer in her dresser that he claimed as his own. Hermione made them some tea. It was nearly two in the morning, and they were both exhausted, but they still had a lot to talk about.

Ron started. He told her about how much trouble he had adjusting to life without Voldemort or Death Eaters trying to kill them all the time, and suddenly there were no great mysteries for them to unravel. He went on to explain how being an Auror was a way for him to ease into normal life, but as time went on there was less and less work to be done as Voldemort's followers were rounded up, and he couldn't handle that. He opened up to her about how he felt lost and aimless, especially as Harry got promoted above him, meaning they got to work together less and less. He remedied these feelings by volunteering for some of the more dangerous cases the department had to offer, but even those were becoming few and far between, and the feelings of aimlessness overtook him again.

As amazing as it felt to him to get all of this off his chest, he still held back a few truths from her that he couldn't quite bring himself to talk about. He neglected to mention how he had been using a Sleeping Draught to help him get through the night without incident. The numerous near-death experiences and the cruel, sometimes torturous dark magic he was sometimes subjected to on those most dangerous cases. He left out the part where he put Snyde in St. Mungo's a few days earlier, and how he had been demoted to a desk job because of his aggressive handling of the young wizard who was pranking muggles. He tried to tell her all of this, but the creeping, ever-present doubts and fears from his subconscious won, convincing him not to.

"I'm so sorry, Ron." She pulled his head down to her shoulder and stroked his hair. "You don't have to do this alone anymore. We can do this together."

"Yeah…" He laid down on the sofa now, his head in her lap, and smiled up at her as she continued to deftly play with his hair. He felt calm and relaxed for this first time in a long time. "I think you might be right."

She smiled down at him, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time that they really could work things out, that they could have a long future together, growing old, just the two of them.

It wasn't long before they both fell asleep on the couch, his head still in her lap. It was the best and most uneventful night of sleep they had together in a while. Unfortunately, it was almost five in the morning when they fell asleep and it was just a few hours later when a stream of sunlight crawled it's way to Ron's eyes. He groaned and opened them to see Hermione above him and fast asleep. His stomach growled and he decided that with his new resolve to be better and feel more deserving of Hermione's affections, he would make them breakfast and let her continue to sleep. He sat up as gently as he could without waking her up and went into the kitchen. He gathered up everything to make eggy bread, her favorite, and went rummaging through her cabinets, looking for the specific skillet he liked to use when he made them breakfast, so he could begin.

Hermione was startled awake by a noisy crash in her kitchen. She made her way there, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and saw Ron on the ground cleaning up the pots he had knocked over. She cleared her throat.

"Hermione!" He stood up, a pan in one hand, a pot in the other. "Sorry… I just, I was going to make breakfast, but I couldn't find the pan I like, and…"

"It's fine, Ron." She smiled, looking forward to breakfast and, while it was the only thing he could cook, he did it extremely well. "What are you making?"

"It's a surprise." He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his back to her as he got to work cracking open the eggs and mixing them up in a bowl. "Unless you have a special request?"

"Well, I have something very specific in mind. It's been a while..."

"What?" His back was still turned to her as he whipped the eggs when suddenly he got hit in the head with something. He pulled it off and saw it was a t-shirt, the one she was wearing last night. He turned around to see her walking away from him, his eyes fixated on her bare back as she sauntered into the bedroom.

"Oh…" He quickly forgot about making food and hurried into the bedroom after her.


	6. Chapter 6- Come Back Home

Hermione sat in a large booth towards the back of the Three-Broomsticks for the first time since she re-sat her seventh year at Hogwarts so she could graduate. Ron sat next to her, an arm around her shoulders, as he took a sip of his Firewhiskey. It was just the two of them.

"Come on, Hermione. Just do it." Ron said encouragingly with a nod and another sip of his drink.

"I will!" She said impatiently before the uncertainty she was feeling set in. "It's been so long. What if no one comes?"

"People will come. Just do it."

"We should be doing this in the Hog's Head…"

"We should, but it's not there anymore, so we do it here."

"Okay…" Hermione took a sip of her Berry Ocky Rot before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small coin. Using her wand, she tapped it, and the numbers on it began to change to the current date and time. She took a deep breath, another sip of her wine, looked up, and waited.

"Now we wait."

Both of them kept scanning the room, waiting. Hermione inched closer to Ron, enjoying the feeling of being with him again. They had been working hard on their relationship for the last several months, and a lot of it was incredibly difficult for both of them, but things were definitely better than they were before.

"Dumbledore's Army!" Ron suddenly shouted to the other end of the Three-Broomsticks, lifting his drink.

"Dumbledore's Army!" Seamus Finnigan shouted back to him.

"Dumbledore's Army!" Someone shouted, and after the green flame of the floo subsided it was revealed to be Ernie MacMillan.

Much to the chagrin of the regulars, shouts of 'Dumbledore's Army!' continued to echo throughout the Three Broomsticks as more people showed up, by apparition, floo, and broom. Hermione couldn't believe just how many members of Dumbledore's Army showed up; Hannah Abbott and Neville showed up together, Harry and Ginny shortly after them, Michael Corner, Padma Patil, Susan Bones, Cho Chang, and Luna.

The circular booth Hermione and Ron had grabbed for them wasn't big enough, so someone decided to make it big enough and enlarged it until it was pushing the adjacent tables across the floor. It was almost impossible to have a full conversation with anyone as each person was being pulled into a different conversation at every turn. Hannah and Neville were the busiest though, as Hannah showed off the enormous engagement ring that Neville had given her just a few days before. This elicited a thunderous round of applause from everyone and several people ordered a round of drinks in celebration, so they ended up celebrating their engagement several times. Any animosity between Ginny and Cho seemed to have disappeared over the years now that Ginny and Harry were married and Cho was in a long-term relationship with a muggle man, although no one seemed to notice that Michael and Cho snuck off on their own after the last round of celebratory engagement drinks were finished. Luna spent much of the night talking to Madame Rosmerta about her Wrackspurt infestation and the possible economic implications of fuzzy-brained employees. Padma, Susan, and Ernie all wound up with their faces covered in soot because Seamus still hadn't figured out how to turn water into rum.

As the night wore on endless hugs and promises to better stay in touch were given out, although when they all got right in the morning many of those promises wouldn't be remembered, but the good time they had would be. Hermione, Ron, Harry, Ginny, and Luna were the last ones at the table. They spent some time talking and catching up for several hours before Madame Rosmerta kicked them out when it was time for her to close up for the night. They all said their goodbyes, Luna mentioning that she wouldn't see them again for quite some time, as she would be travelling for the foreseeable future to study magical creatures with someone named Rolf, but if her coin signaled another meeting, she wouldn't miss it for the world. She apparated away, leaving the four of them standing there in the cool mountain air.

"Do you two want to come back to Hermione's place? Have another drink before tucking in?" Ron asked jovially, not ready for the night to end, but not quite aware of just how much he'd had to drink.

"Ron, no one is coming over. It's late, we're all tired, and another drink is probably a bad idea for all of us." Hermione told him rather matter-of-factly as she put an arm around his waist. "Come on, we're going home." She turned to Harry and Ginny and smiled. "Goodnight, you two. Get home safe."

With a faint pop Hermione and Ron were gone and at the front door of her flat. She let them both in and Ron went straight to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. He was almost asleep when Hermione came in. She couldn't remember the last time she had so much fun, or had quite so much to drink. She collapsed on the bed next to Ron and kicked off her shoes as her head spun from the alcohol. In the laziest way possible, she undressed without ever getting off the bed or sitting up, and slid underneath of the covers. Ron did the same, albeit much less gracefully, and draped an arm over Hermione.

"Neville and Hannah, eh?" Ron mumbled quietly to her.

"Yeah. I like Hannah. She's good for him." Hermione yawned and curled up closer to Ron.

"Maybe we can call another meeting when it's our turn?" Ron smiled and hugged her tighter.

"Yeah… Maybe…" Hermione felt her heart skip a beat. It wasn't a happy beat and it wasn't because he finally told her he wanted to marry her and she could have the fairytale wedding she always dreamed of. It was because she didn't want the fairytale wedding, or any wedding for that matter. She wondered to herself if they never talked about marriage before because, to him, it was an inevitable conclusion that one day they would get married? Not that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life with Ron, because she absolutely did, but marriage was just never something that was important to her. As much as she enjoyed romance, and wished Ron would be a little more romantic at times, she never pictured herself married to him, just them being together and growing old, just the two of them. That was always good enough for her.

Almost an hour later and Hermione was still completely unable to fall asleep. As a last resort, she always kept a small bottle of sleeping draught next to her bed. She rolled over and rummaged through her nightstand drawer and finally found it tucked way in the back. She sat up in bed and brought it up to her lips to take a sip, but when she smelled it she stopped. Bringing it closer to her nose she smelled it again, and she finally realized why that vial she found in Ron's clothes the night he came back to her smelled so familiar; it was Sleeping Draught. She looked over at him, sound asleep, and wondered if that's why he was sleeping better since then, and if that was why he's been almost without incident since they reconciled. She convinced herself that it's possible she was wrong and maybe he wasn't relying on a potion to sleep every night, but she couldn't shake that feeling in the back of her mind. She got out of bed to use the bathroom and quietly made her way through her darkened flat and back into the bedroom.

"Ow!" Hermione stubbed her toe on the corner of the bed and fell forward onto it.

It was enough to wake up Ron, and the second that he was awake there was a thunderous crash where Hermione was standing just seconds earlier. She shrieked and jumped backward further onto the bed. Ron quickly grabbed his wand and lit up the room to see what it was, and just off the corner of the bed was her large wooden dresser, cracked in two, with her clothes halfway hanging out of it.

"Hermione, I… I'm sorry…" Ron immediately realized what happened. He was nearly inconsolable, realizing he almost killed her, one of his worst fears was seconds away from coming true because he passed out before he could take his sleeping draught

"It's okay, Ron. I'm fine." She moved toward him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, this time, but what about next time?" Ron pulled away from her and got out of bed, borderline frantic and pacing around the room. He didn't want to face the truth that he still hid things from her; what he did to Snyde, the anti-muggle prankster he hunted down, his recent demotion, and the physical and mental toll being an Auror took on him. If he could come clean about them, maybe this would all come to an end, but he couldn't, no matter how much he wanted to, his mind a prisoner to itself.

She couldn't tell him nothing would ever happen again, and, as she stared at the broken dresser on the floor in front of her, she couldn't tell him she wasn't worried for both of their well beings. Things had been going so well for them lately that she thought their troubles were behind them, but now she didn't know what was ahead for them, or for Ron, and it was crushing her. She could see the worry in his eyes, the few times he had actually made eye contact with her since he got up, and she walked over to him, hobbling slightly on her stubbed toe. Very tentatively, she reached out and took his hand in hers. Not feeling him pull away from her again, she pulled him close to her and wrapped her arms around him.

"I don't know, Ron…"


	7. Chapter 7- Long Way Down

"The last few weeks have been... an adjustment, to say the least." Hermione chuckled and looked down at her mug of Butterbeer and lined it up perfectly on top of an old water mark left behind by someone else. She looked up and saw Ginny's worried face across the table from her. "I know we never technically lived together, but still… I suppose this is what we have to do for now."

Ginny didn't have much in the way of consolation for Hermione. It was a tough situation to almost quarantine the person you love at night so that he doesn't hurt you. It's not something she could ever imagine.

"You still see each other a lot though, so that's good, right?"

"Yeah. We still do everything we used to do, but it's only until he has to go to sleep. Then he leaves for the night." She took a sip of her drink before setting it back down precisely lined up on top the same water mark. "I send him an owl when he leaves every night. Just so he doesn't feel quite so alone when he wakes up. He says they help him, but it doesn't help me feel any better being alone, though, or sleep any better."

There was a brief silence that Ginny was about to end, but Hermione beat her to it as the walls she put up in her mind suddenly came crashing down in a full blown panic attack.

"Am I doing something wrong?" She blurted out with a short, hysterical laugh and threw her hands in the air. "I should have noticed something was wrong with him sooner, but I didn't!" Her hands came crashing down on the table, almost knocking over their drinks. Tears started to fill her eyes. She looked away from Ginny and felt her voice getting shakier. "Maybe he needs someone better than me, who can actually help him…" She looked up at her. "I let him down. I know I did. I just- I don't think I can do this for him anymore…"

"Next person who doesn't mind their own business is going to have bats coming out of their nose for a week!" Ginny stood with her wand out, threatening anyone who decided to not mind their own business, as Hermione banging the table drew more than a few eyes. When they all turned their attention away from them she sat next to Hermione and placed a hand on her. "Hermione, that's not true. Not even in the slightest. You can do this. Harry and I go through the same ups and downs, everyone does."

Ginny continued to console her for several minutes as best she could until Harry showed up to join them.

"Hey you two." He kissed Ginny hello and sat across from them. He looked to Hermione and could instantly tell she was upset. He looked at Ginny for confirmation and she nodded. He knew it was about Ron, at the very least.

"Hi Harry." Hermione forced a small smile for him before wiping her eyes and staring at her butterbeer again, making absolutely certain it was perfectly lined up in the watermark.

The three of them went on having a fairly normal conversation about Ginny's latest quidditch match, which resulted in a win for the Harpy's and a broken arm for Ginny. Hermione always enjoyed watching the two of them talk about Quidditch because it was something they were both passionate about and connected to. Hermione always thought that if Harry wanted to, he could have been a professional quidditch player as well, although who was better, Harry or Ginny, was always a hotly contested point of conversation, with Harry usually, reluctantly, giving her the slight edge. She almost forgot about her troubles with Ron for a moment when she thought of how much fun he would be having with them if he wasn't out working a case right now.

"Do I have to remind you that your greatest Quidditch achievement was putting me on the team?" Ginny teased her husband.

"Yeah, I guess you might have a point… That was definitely a high point in my quidditch career." Harry replied to her with a sly grin before the three of them burst out laughing.

"It's a shame Ron has to work a case tonight." Hermione said with a happy smile. "You might have won that time if he was here."

"What do you mean?" Harry looked at her, confused. "He hasn't been given any cases or field assignments in months, aside from tagging along on a raid or two."

They both looked at him, having no idea what he was talking about.

"What?" Harry was just as confused by them.

"What do you mean, 'he hasn't had any cases'? Where is he if he's not working a case?" Hermione sat up in her chair.

"He's back in the office doing paperwork, or 'climbing Mt. Parchment', as he calls it. Said he couldn't meet us because he got behind."

"Why has he been doing paperwork instead of field assignments?" Hermione stood up because she didn't know what else to do with herself. She knew the answer already, or part of the answer at least.

"He got demoted. He's been stuck in the office almost every day." He said it very plainly, as if it was common knowledge that everyone should have known about. But as he went to take a sip of his drink, he saw their expressions. He looked between them in disbelief. "You did know about that…" Suddenly, it dawned on him. They didn't know. "didn't you...?"

Hermione sat back down in her chair and her face went blank. An eerie calm washed over her. Her breaths became slowed and intentional, she was sitting up perfectly straight, elbows at ninety degrees, with her palms flat on the table in front of her, tapping her fingers in a rolling cadence. It was not a very natural position for anyone to find themselves in.

"Harry, what happened? Why is Ron on desk duty?" Ginny asked as she watched Hermione closely. She had seen her mad before, but this calmness worried her more than anything else she had seen from her.

"After that big fight the two of you had, Ron went a little off the deep end. He tracked down and single-handedly brought in Merula Snyde, a witch who we've been trying to bring in for over a year."

"Why would that get him demoted? That sounds like a good thing. Why is it not a good thing?" Ginny asked with both hope and confusion.

"He sent her to St. Mungo's for a month." Harry said in a whispered tone. "He got a warning, but that's not what got him demoted."

"Oh…" Hermione responded coolly. "There's more. Did you hear that, Ginny? There's more." She shot a glance to Ginny that she had never seen before, which unsettled her.

Harry nodded slowly. He exchanged looks with Ginny, both of them now keeping a close eye on Hermione. He didn't want to say anything else, but Hermione's entire demeanor made him feel like it would be worse if he said nothing.

"Well…" He spoke slowly and chose his words carefully."Ron used a muggle toilet one day on his way back to the office, a day or two after the Snyde incident, and someone put one of those regurgitating toilet jinxes on it. He went mad. Spent three days chasing them down, wound up in a sewer in Cardiff. I don't really know what happened next, or why, but, thank Merlin he let them go. The next time I saw him in the office he was at his desk with a mountain of paperwork. He's been there ever since."

All three of them were silent. Harry and Ginny were both watching Hermione and exchanging looks with one another. Hermione kept tapping her fingers as her mind tried desperately to catch up with her emotions. When they found a happy medium, her fingers came to a stop. She smiled and stood up, straightening out her robes.

"I'm going to kill him." Hermione said it in such a nonchalant manner that it took her friends a moment to realize she might actually be serious. Hermione turned to leave, but Ginny, against her better judgement, grabbed Hermione's hand and stopped her.

"Hermione!" Ginny stood up and moved in front of her, Harry too.

"I'm just kidding, Ginny. Obviously…" Hermione let out a peculiar little laugh. "I would like to use the bathroom though, if you wouldn't mind stepping aside?"

"I know you're upset." Ginny continued, while neither one of them budged. "I can't possibly understand what you're feeling, but you can't go see him right now. I think that's a really bad idea."

Harry took it as a good sign that neither of them got jinxed on the spot, and that Hermione was still there and that she didn't disapparate.

"Why don't we get a room upstairs," Harry suggested. "and we can talk a little more in private?"

Hermione nodded and suddenly felt her body relax as her emotions came roaring back to just beneath the surface. Her cool expressionless face now looked tired and worn out. "Okay..."

Harry smiled reassuringly and motioned to the barkeep that they were taking a room upstairs. The three of them found an empty room at the end of the hall. Harry took a moment and cast a few quick spells that would guarantee them their privacy. He joined them inside and locked the door behind him to see Hermione sitting on the bed with her head in her hands and shaking.

"He's been lying to me for months. I'm so daft…" She looked up at Harry and Ginny, who had pulled two comfy looking chairs up to the bed so they were sitting in front of her. Her eyes red and puffy, she walked a fine line between crying and angry. "We've been trying so hard to get back to normal, whatever that means for us, but he's been holding back this entire time."

"Hermione, there's no way you could've known." Harry began. "He pulled one over on all of us. The only reason I knew any of it is because we work in the same office together, if not for that… none of us ever would have known."

"No…" Hermione shook her head resolutely. "I should have known. I should have known there was more, but I was just so happy to have him back that it blinded me. He was telling me more, and I was so desperate for him to open up, and finally he was, but I couldn't tell he wasn't telling me everything." She let out a small, defeated laugh and wiped her eyes. "Maybe it's my own fault that dresser almost killed me."

"None of this is your fault." Ginny pulled her chair closer to the bed and took Hermione's hand in hers. "You aren't responsible for him. He must have a reason for lying to you, to all of us, but that was his decision. That had nothing to do with you."

Hermione silently considered what Ginny had said. They all sat in silence as she processed everything. She shook her head and smiled.

"Maybe we really are perfect for each other, though? A couple of liars?"

"Hermione…?"

"I… haven't always been totally honest with him, either."

Harry and Ginny exchanged a confused look.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, first it came up very briefly after the D.A. reunion… Then we were talking the other night, just before he was going to go back to his place. You know how Bill and Fleur are expecting their firstborn? Well, we were talking about it and…" Hermione let out a deep breath, struggling to get the words out because she never outright told this to anyone before. "The conversation lead to us and our future and he… I mean, this was the first time we ever talked about it. I think he always assumed we were on the same page because, well, it's never come up before, but just because I never brought it up, it doesn't mean I implicitly agree with him, does it?"

"Hermione, what are you talking about?" Harry asked, having completely lost her point in her retelling of their conversation.

Hermione looked at Harry and then back to Ginny. She could tell Ginny knew exactly what she was saying, so she gave her a little nod because she couldn't say it herself.

"Harry," Ginny began for her. "Hermione doesn't want the same things Ron does." She gave him a moment to figure it out, but the blank look on his face told her he didn't get it yet. "She doesn't want to get married or have kids."

"Oh… OH." Harry finally understood. He looked at Hermione and then back at Ginny, having no clue what to say next.

Hermione lifted her head up. "I don't know how to tell him… He seemed so happy talking about it that it seemed cruel to do it then. I think I've always known, deep down, he wanted a family of his own, but I guess I hoped I might change my mind one day. I should have told him sooner. Years ago. I've been such a coward…"

The three of them sat there well into the night. Occasionally they would find themselves on a different topic that would take their minds off of things, like the wizard who tried to make his own homemade floo powder and managed to get where he was going, but ended up with his arms where his legs should have been and his legs where his arms should have been **,** but mostly it was a night of brief conversation and long silences.

"I should go." Hermione looked at a clock hanging on the wall and saw it was getting late.

"You can stay with us tonight if you'd rather not be alone." Ginny offered with a sincere smile. "You're always welcome to stay with us. Anytime."

"Thanks, but…" Hermione's first reaction was to turn them down, but she thought about her flat, and everything that had happened there between her and Ron, and she changed her mind, needing a break. "I think I will stay with you, just for tonight."

Both of her friends were relieved to hear her accept their offer. Neither of them wanted her to be completely alone. The three of them walked together in silence to their flat, which wasn't too far from the Leaky Cauldron. Harry got their guest room ready for her, but she was so exhausted that by the time he went to tell her it was ready she had fallen fast asleep on their couch. He draped a blanket over her and let her sleep.


	8. Chapter 8- For Us

Ginny was up early the next morning to get ready for a game against the Kenmare Kestrels when she heard a knock at the door. She finished pulling on her boots and pulled her hair into a ponytail. She checked in on Hermione, who was still fast asleep on the couch, as she went to the door.

"Ron!" Her eyes went wide seeing Ron standing there in the soft, pre-dawn light. She stepped outside and shut the door behind her, blocking him from getting inside. "What are you doing here? Actually, better question, why are you up so early?"

"Haha, very funny…" He rolled his eyes at her. "Have you seen Hermione since you all went out last night?"

"Well, we were out pretty late." Ginny's heart rate picked up. "Why?"

"She- Why are we standing outside?" Ron reached for the door handle to go past her.

"Harry's still asleep." Ginny offered him quickly and stepped to block him. "I don't want to wake him."

"I'll be quiet, promise." Ron once again attempted to get past his sister. "What's gotten into you?" Ginny didn't make it easy for him, but she didn't have a better excuse in that moment to stop him without being too suspicious. She was thankful he went straight to the kitchen, he would only have a slight chance to glimpse Hermione through the doorway, and luckily he didn't.

"Make it quick Ron, and keep it down." She snatched the last pumpkin pastie she was saving for herself out of his hand. "I have to leave soon."

"Right, sure…" Ron was annoyed she took the pastie from him, so instead he grabbed a day old muffin off the table. He took a bite, his mouth full. "I was trying to ask you," He swallowed it and continued. "If you know where Hermione is. I didn't see a letter from her this morning. She hasn't missed sending one since, you know…"

"Yes, I do know…" Ginny replied with a hint of hostility in her voice that she tried to hide. "Like I said, we were out pretty late, so maybe she just forgot and she's still asleep at her place."

"That's the thing, though. I went by her flat before I came here. She wasn't there. I'm worried about her."

Ron lifted the muffin to his mouth and was just about to take another bite out of it when it suddenly exploded in his hand, sending crumbs and bits of blueberry all over the room. Ginny let out a tiny shriek and Ron was standing there motionless.

"How dare you!" Hermione stood in the kitchen doorway, her wand out, pointed directly at Ron, her hand trembling. Her bushy brown hair was a mess, her clothes were all just a little off to one side or the other, and she was furious.

"Hermione…" The only other time Ron had ever seen her so angry was when he returned during the horcrux hunt, after abandoning them, and that was nothing compared to how she looked right now. He opened his mouth to say something but was quickly cut off.

"How dare you pretend to be _worried_ about me!" She flicked her wand and let loose another blasting curse, a cabinet door exploding into thousands of pieces just behind him.

"Have you gone mental?! You could have blown my head off!" Ron ducked, covering his head from the exploding debris.

"When I'm through with you Ronald Weasley, you'll wish I had you lying, deceitful, selfish... arse!" Each word was accompanied by a different spell being swiftly and forcefully hurled towards him. If he wasn't on the receiving end of it, he'd be impressed by her technical skill and flawless technique, especially in her current state.

"PROTEGO!" Both Ginny and Harry shouted at nearly the same time, the latter still in his pajamas, having just gotten there. The shield charms went up between Ron and Hermione, deflecting her spells as they ricocheted across the room, resulting in more exploding pieces of kitchen, and one chair that was turned into a cauldron.

The dust and debris settled and Hermione hadn't moved even an inch, her shaking wand still pointing straight at Ron, her chest heaving as she tried to contain whatever she could of her anger. Lucky for him the shield charms survived her barrage of spells, albeit barely.

"Hermione…" Harry dropped his wand to his side and took a small step toward her.

"Harry!" Ginny whispered to him.

Harry brushed her off and ignored her plea to not approach their friend right now because this is precisely the kind of thing that he did for a living. He took another step towards her.

"Look… I understand how angry you are."

Hermione's eyes flickered off of Ron and towards Harry for a brief moment. It was enough for Harry to see she could hear him, even if she didn't believe him.

"I've felt that kind of anger before. Like… a piece of you has been stolen away."

Hermione's wand hand lowered slightly, just by an inch, but Harry could tell he was getting through to her. Ron and Ginny looked on at the scene before them and couldn't help but be impressed by Harry's ability to defuse the situation, even if that fuse was still dangerously close to being lit at any moment. He inched closer to her again.

"We can settle this a better way. Throwing curses at Ron won't make you feel better…"

"It might." Hermione replied coldly before she let her gaze fall upon Harry again, longer this time. There was a mix of calm and apprehension on his face. She saw Ginny with the same look and began to soften her stance a little bit more. Her wand began to lower again, just far enough that it wasn't pointed directly at Ron.

"Just hand me your wand, and we can sit down and figure this out, okay?" He put away his own wand in the band of his shorts and held out his upturned hand so she could give him her wand. "Please, Hermione."

Hermione looked at his hand like it was a foreign object and considered what he said. She looked at Ron and felt a strong urge to turn him into a beetle, but the look on his face, that he was genuinely afraid of her in that moment, brought her back from the edge. She didn't take her eyes off of him, but reached to Harry and dropped her wand into his hand. Harry and Ginny both let out a relieved sigh. Ron, on the other hand, almost wished he had been hit by every curse she had thrown at him. Somehow it would have been easier than what he knew was coming.

"You've been lying to me…" Hermione's voice cracked, still staring at Ron as waves of hurt and pain rolled over her. Tears started streaming down her face as she turned away from him and gathered all her strength to get as far away from him as she could to the guest room at the other of end of the flat.

"Hermione, I..." Ron made to go after her, but Ginny stood in his way with a stern look her mother would be proud of.

"Not right now, Ron." She disappeared down the long hallway to the guest room to be with Hermione.

"Reparifarge." Harry undid the transfiguration of a chair that had been turned into a cauldron before looking around the kitchen at the destruction Hermione had caused. He was intentionally not looking at Ron because he honestly didn't know what to say to him.

"What was all that about, eh?" Ron said with a casual chuckle that was anything but casual, a vain attempt to keep up the lie he had been living up to that point.

"Really? Now?" Harry turned around to look at his best friend in disbelief that he was trying to brush this off. "She nearly killed you Ron. You're lucky Ginny was here to get her shield charm up first, otherwise we'd be cleaning up you instead of our cabinets."

"I don't think she would have actually killed me, though." Once again he tried to lighten things and downplay what had happened but Harry wasn't going to play along with him.

"She knows, Ron. I told her everything. She knows about Snyde, Cardiff, your demotion, all of it." Harry was quickly losing his patience with him, but he tried his best. "I can't believe you never told her."

Ron could instantly feel his mind trying to close in on itself, to deflect and retreat, it was the same every time things got to be too much for him. The pit in his stomach grew enormously as he listened to Harry, because he knew this was something he would be forced to confront sooner rather than later.

"I'm such a git …"

"You're not wrong. She's hurt, Ron, and she's not handling it well." Harry tried to use a few different spells to repair their cabinets, but they were blasted into so many pieces that it was nearly impossible. He looked at Hermione's wand, still in his other hand, for a brief moment and muttered something under his breath about this being the most effective casting of confringo he had ever seen.

"What do you mean?"

"While we were at the Leaky Cauldron, after she found out about all of it, she started blaming it all on herself."

"Blaming it on herself?" Ron was stunned. "None of this is her fault…"

"You need to talk to her Ron," Harry turned to face him again and placed a hand on his shoulder. "if she'll even let you get within shouting distance of her. You both have some things you need to say to each other."

"Well, maybe you and Ginny could-"

"No." Harry interrupted him and shook his head. "You're going to have to face her and come clean yourself. Look, Ginny and I, we love both of you, but we can't be the middlemen for you. Not anymore. You guys need to figure this out yourselves."

Harry and Ron continued cleaning the kitchen together in silence until they heard a quiet, meek voice behind them.

"Hello, Ronald…"


	9. Chapter 9- So Much Work

"Hermione…"

Hermione stood before them in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing some of Ginny's clothes, having finally changed out of her work clothes from the day before. Her demeanor was the complete opposite of the last time she was in the kitchen. Her shoulders were slumped, she couldn't stop fiddling with the drawstring of her lounge pants. She could barely keep her head up to look at them.

"Would you… like to talk?" Her voice was full of apprehension.

"Yeah, I guess I have some explaining to do." Ron reluctantly agreed, but he knew it was what he had to do. He set down the bottom half of the destroyed waste bin he was about to try to repair and walked towards her.

"Harry…" Hermione glanced up at him as Ginny joined him at his side. "I'm really sorry about your kitchen."

Harry gave her a small nod and a smile. He watched the two of them walk down the hallway together. He looked at Ginny, who could tell exactly what he was thinking.

"I slipped her just a little calming draught when I gave her some water." Ginny grinned, quite proud of herself.

"I still have her wand."

"Oh thank Merlin..." Ginny let out a huge sigh of relief and started helping in the cleanup process.

Ron and Hermione finally reached the guest room and shut the door behind them. Ron sat on the bed, so Hermione sat on a plush chair in the corner, curling her legs beneath herself, and continuing to avoid eye contact as she fiddled with her hands. Neither of them said anything for what seemed like hours, until finally Hermione had the courage to say something.

"I'm sorry that I almost killed you." She offered a weak smile.

"No, it's alright..." He attempted a smile back at her, but it faded quickly. "I deserved it anyway."

Hermione didn't correct him, but not because she agreed with him, but because she was at a loss for words at her own actions. They sat in silence again as the sun slowly brightened the room.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you everything." He blurted, looking at the ground near her. "I don't know why I didn't. I wanted to but I just couldn't." He paused for a moment and looked up at her.

"You're right. You should have." She replied with little compassion, and hurt in her voice. "You've been lying to me for months. After all we've been through..."

"I know, and I'm sorry-"

"Well you should be!" Hermione snapped at him. "I was so worried about you, and trying so hard to help you that I felt like I failed you! It would have hurt less if you had just left me, but lying to me? Making me think that you were happy, that we were happy…" She trailed off, unable to continue. She used her sleeve to dry her eyes.

Silence overtook the room once again. Ron struggled with what to say because he didn't want to say anything at all. He could feel the flood waters of his mind rising, threatening to overtake him once again, where he would ultimately ruin any chance he had of being with the woman he loved. These feelings of inadequacy and guilt poisoned him until he couldn't take any more of it.

"Maybe you're right about me." Ron finally spoke again, dejected and panicked, his foot rapidly tapping the floor. "Maybe I do only have the emotional range of a teaspoon."

"Ron?" Hermione, concerned, sat forward in her chair. "Ron, what's wrong?"

He didn't hear her over the tempest raging inside of his mind. He began feeling claustrophobic and looking around the room. His breathing was getting shallow and rapid. He stood up and walked towards the door, trying to leave, but Hermione stood in his way. She grabbed him by the arm.

"I have to go," He pulled his arm away from her and turned around, hurriedly looking for another way out. "I have to leave."

"Ronald, look at me!" She moved around in front of him several times as he continued looking for a way out. He saw she had abandoned the door and as he opened it, just a couple inches, she slammed it shut on him. She turned him around and pushed his back against the door. She took his head in her hands and forced him to look down at her. Their eyes met. Ron, feeling grounded again, slowly calmed down. She took him to the bed and sat him down, pulling the chair over so she could sit in front of him.

"See…?" Ron started with a shaky voice. "A teaspoon…" He managed a half grin before his face went completely blank and expressionless.

"Ron?" She waited a moment and didn't see any change in his expression. "Can you hear me, love?" She started slowly, hearing the feeling of insecurity and inadequacy in his voice before. She had seen him self-deprecating for years, but it wasn't until just now, in his panicked state, that she truly realized how it was indicative of something much deeper inside of him. It made her feel foolish, but for now she just tried to hold his attention. "You are so much more than a teaspoon…"

"Yeah?" He replied quietly, not really believing her.

"Absolutely." She said with absolute certainty. The look on his face told her all she needed to know, that he didn't believe her. There was silence, again, before she spoke. "Do you remember one of the first nights in the tent, when Harry was on watch, and I couldn't stop crying about the night I bewitched my parents so they wouldn't remember me? How you sat on the floor next to my bunk and just held my hand while I told you everything I could possibly remember about them?" She smiled softly at the memory. "I was terrified that, somehow, if I forgot them, I'd never get them back."

"Yeah, I remember…"

"When I first met you, I never, in a thousand years, would have thought you could be capable of that kind of compassion, sympathy, and kindness. You are capable of great emotion, Ron. You don't have to keep a stopper in it. Not for anyone, and especially not for me."

She could see the torment inside of him creeping to the surface again, the same torment and conflict that she had seen a few minutes ago and many times before. It broke her heart to see it now, because she knew that if he couldn't let it out now, when their relationship was the closest it had ever been to ending, she didn't know what else she could do.

She knew she couldn't let him do this on his own. Slowly she slid off the chair and knelt on the ground in front of him. She took his hand in hers and she gently stroked it.

"It's okay, Ron," She looked up into his eyes. "I'm here. I'm with you."

"Hermione, I…" Ron couldn't get out another word before he finally let go of whatever was holding him back, bursting into tears. He squeezed Hermione's hand as she got up and sat on the bed next to him. He buried his face in her shoulder.

They sat like that for some time. Hermione gently stroked his hair and whispered him words of consolation. Eventually Ron was able to speak again. He finally told her everything, and not just what happened in the last few months, but over the years since he had left Hogwarts. He told her about the first time he realized he had a problem adjusting to a new life when he was on a case chasing down some of the last of Voldemort's followers when he was was hit from behind with the cruciatus curse. He tried to explain how, in some terrible way, deep down inside of him, it made him feel alive again. This revelation was something Hermione could not possibly comprehend based on her own experience being cruciated by Bellatrix inside Malfoy Manor. Ever the student, she asked him question after question to understand him better, which eventually turned into some arguing, which turned into a lot of arguing, which turned into some shouting. It prompted Harry to knock on the door to check in on them, which got them to quit arguing in circles and, eventually, to move on. At least until Ron told her that he was using a sleeping draught to fall asleep most nights, which confirmed Hermione's suspicions, and lead to another intense argument about self-medicating potion use which didn't end until Ron vowed to stop doing it and trusting in her assertion that they could find a better way. It was both physically and mentally exhausting for both of them, but eventually Ron didn't have anything else to tell her and the two sat next to each other on the bed holding hands.

"You see?" She smiled at him and touched his face. "You have so many more emotions than a teaspoon."

"Yeah, I guess so." He laughed. "Let's just hope our kids don't end up on the teaspoon spectrum, right?"

Hermione felt her heart drop at the mention of kids. Her smile suddenly faded and she looked down at the ground. Ron noticed.

"What is it?"

"It's- Well, you see,I-" She had no idea where to start. Her mind was so focused on helping Ron and being there for him that she was completely unprepared to have this conversation, but she knew she had to.

"Ron," She stood up and paced to the other end of the room and back again. She looked him in the eyes, a little afraid, because she didn't know how he would react to this, or if he would even want her anymore. She braced for the worst and finally let it out as she sat next to him again. "I have to tell you something, and don't really know how, but I… don't want to have children, or get married."

"Yeah, right, Hermione." Ron grinned before he understood the look in her eyes. He felt a terrible, sinking feeling of realization in his stomach. "You're serious, aren't you?"

Hermione hesitantly nodded.

"You never said anything… We just talked about it the other night…"

"I know, and I'm so sorry, Ron. I am. I should have told you sooner, but it just never came up before the other night, and I was so surprised by it, I just didn't know how to tell you that I don't want those things. I never have." She watched him closely to see his reaction. It was his turn to stand up and pace across the room now.

"I mean, I've always pictured us getting married and having kids. I never thought we wouldn't, but I guess you're right. We never talked about it before." He sat down next to her on the bed. "Is it me? Is it because of everything?"

"No. Absolutely not." She reassured him as strongly as she could. "It's never been because of anything you've done. I promise."

Ron was quiet for a while after that, sometimes in deep thought and staring at Hermione for long stretches but not saying anything. She nervously picked at her nails, not looking back at him, as they sat there. She heard the front door open down the hall, followed by the faint murmur of Ginny's voice. Hermione was surprised she was already home from her match and wondered why. It was a welcome distraction from the silence she shared with Ron.

"I gotta to go." Ron said abruptly and stood up.

"What?" Her attention was focused back on him now. "Oh… Okay… I..." Hermione slumped, speechless, against the headboard of the bed. She couldn't believe their relationship was over in the blink of an eye. Years of her life and her entire future in question because of her non-traditional views on marriage and kids.

Ron left the room without saying a word. Hermione got up and watched him walk about halfway down the hallway before she couldn't watch him any more and returned to the guest room, collapsing face down on the bed to contemplate what had just happened. She was about to go tell Harry and Ginny everything when she heard a toilet flush, shortly followed by Ron walking back into the room.

"Ronald Weasley!" Hermione spun around quickly and threw a pillow at him as hard as she could.

"Sorry!" He caught the pillow she threw. "I just had to use the toilet…"

Hermione glared at him before she calmed herself down and watched him closely. She was so anxious she couldn't keep quiet any longer. She didn't look at him, instead staring intently at the stitching on the cuff of her sleeves. "So, what are you thinking about?"

"I think that... I need more time to think about it." Ron glanced over at her. "Sorry, I know that's not a good answer."

"No, it's a… fine answer." She offered him a weak, understanding smile that faded quickly. "I understand."

"Hermione, I…" He moved closer to her, placing a hand on her leg. "I don't know what we should do either. I know I love you, and I want to be with you. Everything else… We can just figure that out as we go, can't we?" He knew he was being selfish, just like she said he was when she was hurling curses at him in the kitchen. His mind raced with all the thoughts of what could go wrong, like if he hurt her in her sleep, she was never able to trust him again, or he never stopped wanting a family. _But wouldn't it be worth it even if it all goes wrong?_ He thought to himself.

"I love you, too, Ron." Hermione smiled and leaned forward and tightly embraced him. Part of her was so happy that she wanted to jump on him and scream, but another part of her was scared. Her greatest fault was to always need him, and now there was this carrot dangling in front of her that maybe things could work out, but there was so much that could go wrong at the same time. She thought to herself, _It would be worth it, wouldn't it?_

"Ron?" Hermione asked him as she pulled back from him a little. "What do you think about slowing down a little, while we figure things out again?"

"Oh…" Ron was caught off guard, but it made sense. As much as it hurt him, he didn't expect her to trust him right away again, something he only had himself to blame for. "Yeah, I suppose that's for the best."

"Thank you." She smiled and kissed his cheek. "Are you hungry?"

"Always. You?" he grinned.

"Famished." She laughed at him.

The two finally left the guest room, holding hands, to find Harry and Ginny doing an exceptionally poor job of pretending they weren't just trying to hear everything that was going on.

"Pathetic." Hermione grinned and rolled her eyes at them.

"You know, George's new Extendable Ears have a slight camouflage charm on them. Might want to upgrade, Gin." Ron shook his head and grinned, following Hermione to the couch and sitting next to her while Harry gave Ginny a hard time about not letting the listening end hang out of her pocket.

"So, it's safe to assume you both know everything…?" Hermione raised an eyebrow at both of them.

"Just about, yeah." Harry replied.

"Good. We can fill you in on the rest while we eat."


	10. Chapter 10- Alive

"Oh, bollocks!" Ron got increasingly frustrated while Hermione sat behind him and laughed hysterically. "How in the bloody hell am I supposed to knock down every pin with only two balls? It's impossible!"

"It's called skill, Ron," She got up and nudged him to the side so she could pick up her ball. "And you clearly don't have it."

Hermione chucked her bowling ball down the lane with ease, knocking over eight of the ten pins.

"Ha! Good luck with that. They're not even next to each other." Ron said smugly.

"Watch and learn." She smirked at Ron and threw her ball with a slight curve to it, smashing one pin and sending it flying into the other, showing off her skills from when her parents used to take her bowling. She turned around and bowed. "Thank you."

"Lucky shot." Ron crossed his arms and sulked back into his chair. "I don't even know why muggles like this game. Nothing flies or explodes..."

Hermione loved taking Ron to do muggle things on dates simply because it got him out of his comfort zone. She rolled her eyes at him and patted him on the shoulder while she was on her way to put her regular shoes back on. She grabbed her coat and scarf.

"Come on. Let's go get dessert. It'll make you feel better."

"If they don't have Rum Raisin I'm going home," Ron began putting on his shoes and coat. "And this is going down as the worst fifth date of all time."

"They always have Rum Raisin because you're the only person who actually gets it." She laughed and took his arm as they left the bowling alley and began walking down a bustling London street. While he went on his rant about why Rum Raisin is the best flavor of ice cream there's ever been, Hermione was lost in thought. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this happy with him, acting like stupid, lovesick kids. She admired his commitment to taking things slow, especially how he was keeping track of the number of dates they had been on since their talk at Harry and Ginny's. The toughest part was still not sleeping in the same room, or even the same home, together, but if they were really trying to start fresh and go slow, it was a willing sacrifice for them.

"...And on top of that, everyone likes rum. Find me one person, of age, who doesn't like rum and I'll streak through Diagon Alley the week before classes start."

Hermione laughed and squeezed his arm as he continued his rant all the way to the ice cream parlor until he finally got Hermione to admit that Rum Raisin was, at least, not terrible. They left the ice cream parlor and walked with their dessert for a bit longer before they found an isolated side street and they disapparated to Ron's flat on the outskirts of London.

"Hang on, just a minute, okay?" He said to Hermione as he quickly walked into his flat and closed the door in her face before she could answer.

"Sure, no problem Ron." She said to herself as she pulled her scarf a little tighter around her neck. "I'll just stand here with my frozen dessert in the middle of November and talk to myself…"

It was a few minutes before she heard Ron calling to her through the door that she could come in now. She opened the door and stepped inside. She gasped when she saw him.

"Does this mean?" She asked excitedly.

"Yeah," His grin was almost as wide as it had ever been, standing there in his Auror robes with his badge pinned on. "They put me back in my old post!"

"RON!" Hermione screamed and dropped her ice cream on the ground as she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly. "That's amazing!"

"Having… trouble breathing…" When she finally let go of him he smiled down at her. "I know. They said I finally seem like the guy they first hired again."

"That's wonderful, Ron!" She threw her arms around his waist this time and hugged him tightly.

"It's all thanks to you though, isn't it?" He looked down and smiled sincerely at her. "Honestly. Thank you."

She blushed and pushed him backward onto the couch. She knelt beside him, leaning across his lap so they were face to face.

"I'm extremely proud of you, Auror Weasley." She said with a smile before leaning in close to him so that their faces were almost touching, whispering. "Extremely proud."

She kissed him deeply, hungrily, pressing her body against his, running a hand through his hair. He kissed her back, trying to keep up with her, one hand finding its way to the small of her back. Until, suddenly, she pulled her lips away from his and smirked at him.

"Sorry, I don't know what got into me. It's not really appropriate behavior for a fifth date, is it?"

"Well, I think that depends on who you ask." Ron replied, breathing deeply, his hands keeping them pulled close together.

"Well, it is if you ask me." She leaned in close again, moving so she was straddling his body. "But maybe, just for tonight, of course, we can cheat? Just a little? Maybe... stop pretending this is just our fifth date?" She kissed him again, barely able to restrain herself, but she managed to pull away. She tapped his Auror badge. "Since it's a special occasion and all?"

"Yes. Definitely yes." Ron was left almost speechless by her advances. He pulled her into another kiss and wrapped his arms around her waist. He stood, lifting her up with him. Their lips never stopped touching except for the occasional gasp of air. He walked them to his room and tossed her down on the bed. She let out a burst of giggles and pulled him on top of her so they could celebrate.


	11. Chapter 11- Same Thing

"Harry! Ginny!" Hermione excitedly leaped toward them through the doorway as they opened the door to their flat, wrapping an arm around each of them and hugging them tightly. "Happy Christmas!"

"Yes, we're all happy to see each other. Brilliant. Can I come inside now? I think I'm becoming part snowman again." Ron stood there getting covered in snow for the second year in a row.

"Well, you're getting really good at it," Ginny replied. "Oh calm down and get in here already."

Hermione and Ron were amazed at the decorations this year since apparently the Potters finally had time to unpack everything and prepare for the holiday.

"Everything looks amazing, Ginny," Hermione said excitedly as she peered at a wondrous little birdhouse decoration with little wooden birds hopping all over the roof.

"This had nothing to do with me. It was all Harry."

"Well done, Harry." Hermione glanced at Harry, quite impressed.

"Well done, mate." Ron slapped him on the back hard enough to make him stumble, grinning. "All those years helping Professor Flitwick during holidays really paid off, didn't it? Good to see you learned something useful for the real world."

"Thanks, Ron." He recovered and shook his head. "Anyone want something to drink?"

"Just some tea, thanks." Hermione replied.

"Same." Came from Ginny who was in the closet hanging up their guests' coats.

"Do you have any chamomile?"

Both Harry and Ginny looked at Ron, confused.

"What?"

"Well, every year we do this you ask for a firewhiskey." Harry began. "It's the only reason we ever have any."

"Oh, right. Well…" He looked to Hermione for a moment who gave him a nod of encouragement. "...ever since what happened after the D.A. reunion, I don't drink anymore. Just in case."

"Yeah, sure mate. One chamomile tea, coming right up."

Harry disappeared into the kitchen while the others went to the extravagantly decorated living room. Ginny sat on the love seat and waited for Harry. She watched Hermione and Ron sit so close together that they were nearly on top of each other. She smiled fondly, remembering Christmas last year when things were so different between them. Harry showed up just a few moments later with everyone's drinks.

"Hermione's got me hooked on this stuff." He was genuinely excited for his tea and took a sip of it. He grimaced a little as it went down. He looked around and no one noticed but Hermione, who was stifling a laugh. He whispered to her. "This is terrible."

"That's because I make you chai tea, not chamomile." She whispered back to him before they both erupted into a fit of laughter.

The four of them talked well into the night, ate way too much food, and eventually decided to turn in for the night.

"The guest room is ready for you guys." Ginny said with a smile as she levitated the last of the dishes into the sink to be washed later.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other awkwardly and each of them motioned for the other one to take the guest room.

"Hermione, you take it. I'll stay out here on the couch. It's fine."

"Are you sure, Ron? That couch is way too small for you."

"Yeah. Go ahead."

Ginny watched the interaction, confused before she realized what was going on. She felt like a complete idiot, not remembering the two of them still weren't sleeping in the same bed at night.

"Don't worry, Ron. I'll take care of it for you." Ginny said with a smile before leaving the room to transfigure the couch into a very comfortable looking queen-sized bed.

They all said goodnight to each other and now it was just Ron and Hermione. Hermione was visibly sad as they got ready for bed. She didn't say much, but Ron could tell, and he knew why because he was feeling the same way. It was torturous not being able to spend the night together when they would be so close all night. It was somehow worse than when they were in different homes for the night. He wanted so badly to be able to be with her again. He missed waking up next to her more than anything else in the world.

Ron set his wand down on the coffee table that was acting as a nightstand before he accompanied Hermione to the guest room when she was ready for bed. The two of them didn't say much, each knowing what the other was thinking, and instead, they just held each other for a while until she fell asleep.

Ron quietly snuck out of her room after debating for some time if he should stay with her or not. He couldn't stop thinking about being with Hermione and how they got to this point. He was upset and started blaming himself for it, remembering everything he had done throughout the year. It was difficult for him to concentrate on anything else, but eventually, he fell into an uneasy and restless sleep.

Hermione woke up several hours later when she rolled over and reached for Ron, only to be reminded that he wasn't there, again. A bittersweet smile curled across her lips because she knew how Ron wanted to stay with her at night as much as she wanted him, too, but his dedication to them wouldn't let him. As much silly fun as they were having at times, she wanted more than that. She couldn't get the idea out of her head of Ron being alone on the couch and it almost brought her to tears before she decided that it was time for things to change. She wanted him back, needed him back, in her life full time, and she was going to start now.

Hermione slipped out of bed with a certain amount of trepidation and excitement. She put on her slippers and quietly crept down the hallway to the living room. When she saw Ron she got so excited about being with him that she didn't notice him quietly mumbling, or that the light dusting of snow crunching under her feet wasn't from the decorations Harry put out.

"Ron?" She whispered gently and smiled as she approached him, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

Upon being touched, Ron sat bolt upright and silently slashed towards her twice with his wand already in hand, two bursts of light illuminating the room. The bursts of light woke him up and for a brief moment in time he was happy that she was there, but any happiness he felt was quickly gone upon hearing her.

"Ron..."

Her voice was hollow and breathless. He blinked a few times and threw his wand down, wondering why it was even in his hand in the first place. He watched Hermione's shirt rapidly soak with blood before her body slumped to the ground.

"Oh no… no no no!" Ron leaped out of bed and knelt down beside her, holding her head in his lap as blood continued to pour out of a gaping wound that stretched diagonally across her chest. Her body suddenly started convulsing, unlike anything Ron had ever seen before. "Hermione! HERMIONE!"

The room lit up around them. Harry and Ginny stood there shocked by the grisly sight of Hermione covered in blood while an uncontrollable bone-chilling giggling escaped her lips between cries of pain.

"Help her!" He pleaded with them as he tried to hold still her convulsing body.

They both rushed to where Hermione's body continued to convulse before them in a pool of her own blood. Ginny had to forcibly pull Ron away from her body so that Harry could tend to her. Something about it felt incredibly familiar to Harry like he had seen this before, but he couldn't tell what it was. He tried every healing spell he had learned over the years and from his Auror training, but nothing completely stopped the bleeding or the convulsing and disturbing laughter that echoed from her.

"Ginny, we can't help her if we don't know what happened!"

"Ron! RON!" Ginny shouted in her brothers face to try and get his attention, but no matter what she did he couldn't stop sobbing and staring past her, to Hermione.

"It's no good. He's in total shock." She began looking around for his wand and saw it lying on the ground, smeared with some of Hermione's blood. She grabbed it and handed it to Harry.

"Thanks. Try to slow the bleeding any way you can." He got up and let Ginny take over trying to heal her. She tried some of the healing spells she had picked up from years of on-the-spot healing she would do at her quidditch matches, but nothing worked. She grabbed a sheet off the bed and tried covering the open wound with it. It was hardly effective and soon it was soaked with blood too.

While she was doing that, Harry set down Ron's wand on the bed and pointed his own wand at it.

"Prior Incantato." As he said the spell the wand hovered in the air before him and from the tip of Ron's wand came a white light that Harry recognized immediately as it slashed through the air like a sword.

"Sectumsempra…?" He muttered under his breath before he turned to Ginny. "Ginny, we have to get her to St. Mungo's now. We can't fix this here."

She understood and picked Hermione's body off the ground and placed her in Harry's arms. The convulsing was getting weaker by the second as she lost more blood. Her painful, haunting laughter was occasionally being interrupted by the sounds of her choking up her own blood.

"Take care of Ron." said Harry, before he stepped into their fireplace

She nodded and tossed the floo powder for him as he said where he needed to go. "St. Mungo's, fourth floor!"

Suddenly they were gone in a rush of green flame and the room was quiet again except for the faint sound of sobbing. Ginny turned around and saw Ron on the ground, his knees pulled toward his chest and his head buried in his arms. He couldn't stop seeing Hermione slumping to the ground and convulsing, the disturbing sound of her giggling and laughing mixed with such great pain still ringing in his ears. She went to him and sat next to him, an arm over his shoulder. They sat like that for a long time before Ginny finally felt like she could say something to him.

"Ron?" She looked at him to try and get his attention. "What happened?"

Ginny waited for a response, but when none came she stood up, tears in her eyes, and got out her wand. She cleaned Hermione's blood from her own clothes before she began cleaning up the large pool of blood that had been left behind. She wept as the realization of what might happen to Hermione was starting to set in. She pulled the blood-soaked sheets off the bed, layer by layer, only to see that every layer she pulled off had more blood. Eventually, she got so fed up with it that she used the vanishing spell to completely get rid of the entire bed, from headboard to footboard. She stood there motionless, not sure what to do next. She looked at Ron, who was still in shock and had barely moved at all since she was with him. Ginny knew what had happened, or at least she could piece together enough of it to know that he had done something to her in his sleep. She couldn't imagine what was going on inside his mind at the moment.

Just as she was about to approach him he looked up at their front door as the mail slot clanged shut. Ginny rushed to the door and saw a letter on the ground with Harry's writing on it.

"Ron, it's from Harry." He stood up and watched her intently. She opened it up and read it out loud, knowing he wouldn't send them terrible news via owl.

"Got her here just in time. Healers stopped the bleeding. They're still with her and assessing what happened. I'll write again when I know something else."

Ron felt a wave of relief that was so insignificant to him that he was barely aware of it. It was good news that they stopped the bleeding and that maybe she would be okay, but his mind was drowning in a sea of despair and flashbacks of her almost dying in his arms, because of what he did. The only thing that kept him from slipping back into a state of total shock was his sister embracing him.

"What have I done?" He sobbed as he wrapped his arms around her. She didn't have an answer for him. She couldn't tell him this wasn't his fault, or that it would be okay because she didn't know if any of that was true. She got them some tea and slipped a little calming draught into Ron's, but he didn't drink a sip of it. All she could do was be there for him and wait with him until they got more news from Harry.

Hours passed and the two of them were still awake as the sun came up and light poured in through the windows, casting a golden light on what should have been a beautiful Christmas morning. An owl showed up with another letter from Harry. Ginny picked it up and read it to herself.

 _She's going to be okay. They gave her a sleeping draught and she's recovering, but she might be here for a while. The healers are very adamant about no visitors for now. I contacted her parents and got their fireplace hooked up to the floo network. They'll be here soon. I'm going to fill them in and then come home so they can be with her._

 _-Harry_

"She's going to be okay, Ron." She looked up at him from the letter with a smile. "That's good news."

"Yeah, good news..." Ron said in a weak voice. Knowing that she would live was enough to lift him out of his shock, even just a little bit. He had been going over that night in his mind a thousand times, but he couldn't remember anything at all between falling asleep and seeing her soaked in her own blood. He continued. "Did he say what it was? Did they figure out what I did to her?"

"He didn't say, I'm sorry." She shook her head. "He'll be home soon. Her parents are on their way, he'll be back after he fills them in."

Ron nodded in acknowledgment as more fear and worry crawled into his mind at the mention of her parents, the much wider repercussions of his actions started to hit him like a ton of bricks. He knew there was no excuse, no reason, that he could give anyone that they would understand. He would consider himself lucky if her parents even let him send her an owl for the rest of her life after this. He looked down at himself and saw her blood still all over his hands and his clothes. He got up and went to the bathroom, starting up the shower and stepped in, letting the near-scalding hot water wash over him as he got lost inside his mind for a while.

About an hour later Harry walked in through the front door. Ginny rushed to greet him and threw her arms around his neck. They held each other until Harry noticed Ron wasn't anywhere to be seen.

"Where's Ron?"

"He's still here. He's in the shower." She reassured him, hearing the concern in his voice. "He's been in there for about an hour." She stopped Harry before he could say anything. "Yes, I've been checking on him. He's fine. Well, as fine as he can be, I guess. He's talking, a little bit. I think knowing she's going to pull through is helping."

"It's bad, Ginny." Harry didn't know how to describe it exactly, but he tried as Ginny made him some tea. He took a seat at the kitchen table, looking tired and exhausted, bits of blood still stained his clothes from the rush job he did to clean himself up.

"Thanks." Harry took a sip and looked at Ginny as she sat across from him. He knew she wanted to hear more about Hermione, but that she wouldn't press the issue until he was ready for it. Harry set down his tea and held his wife's hand.

"Sectumsempra did the worst of it. That's what Prior Incantato revealed from his wand."

"Snape's spell?" Ginny asked in surprise.

"Yeah." Harry nodded. "The healers said I got her there just in time. If she had lost any more blood…"

"Good," Ginny replied weakly as she thought of the alternative. Something occurred to her and she looked at him inquisitively. "Was that it, though? Something about it was so odd…" Ginny wiped her eyes and her voice trembled. "I… I can't get that the sound of her laughing and giggling out of my head."

"There's more." Harry nodded and squeezed her hand. "The healers said it was something else. Something in addition to Snape's spell that was making it worse. It took them awhile to figure it out because at first, they thought it was just shock, but one of them realized it looked like she was reacting like she was being tickled."

"Being tickled?"

"Yeah. Rictusempra, of all things."

"Rictusempra? The tickling charm?" Ginny was bewildered and confused.

"Yeah. That's why she couldn't stop giggling and convulsing the whole time. Apparently, it took whatever sectumsempra did to her and made it worse, tearing open her wounds even further."

"Oh god…" Ginny felt like she was going to be sick as she imagined what that must have felt like. Her skin crawled."So… how long do they think she will be there?"

"I don't know." Harry shrugged. "They got the chest wound closed, but it cut her really deep. The internal wounds are the ones that will keep her there for a while. It did some nasty internal damage, nicked a few of her ribs and took a bit out of her collarbone, too"

Ginny sat quietly and took it all in. "But they think she'll be okay?"

"Yeah." Harry nodded as he slumped back into his chair, exhaustion setting in. "She'll have some scarring on her chest but she'll be okay."

"What did you tell her parents?" Ginny asked quietly as they both turned their heads hearing the shower finally turn off a few moments earlier. Harry was about to answer but Ron soon entered the kitchen with them.

"Harry…" Ron stood awkwardly at the doorway. He wasn't sure what kind of welcome he would get from him and all he wanted to do was ask him about Hermione.

"She's going to be okay, Ron." Harry could see the apprehension in Ron and tried to reassure him.

"What happened?" Ron asked, doing the best he could to get the words out. "What did I do to her?"

Harry was surprised by his bluntness, expecting him to dance around the subject a little more. He told him everything he had told Ginny, watching him carefully the entire time. He was surprised, once again, at how Ron was handling everything; no joking, or trying to change the subject or anything of the sort. Harry finished telling him everything and Ron had the same question Ginny did.

"Do her parents know it was me?" Ron asked with trepidation. Her parents liked him and trusted him to look out for their daughter in a world they couldn't live in, and right now he was certain that would never be a trust he could get back from them.

"No," Harry shook his head. "I didn't tell them. Wasn't the right time, or the right place. They just wanted to know she was okay."

"Right. Yeah…" Ron's voice trailed off as he stared through the kitchen doorway and at the tiny birdhouse decoration that Hermione had been so fond of the night before.

The three of them sat there in silence for a while. Ginny suggested they all try to get some sleep, despite the fact that it was the middle of Christmas Day. Harry agreed with her, but Ron was silent as he continued watching the little wooden birds hop around the top of the birdhouse. They let him be for a while and rested in their bedroom, but neither of them could sleep, despite their exhaustion. They checked in on Ron after a bit and found him sitting on the floor, his chin on the small table with the small birdhouse decoration on it, still just staring at it.

"I almost killed her…" Ron finally spoke for the first time in hours, his voice trembling. "I can't… I should…" He didn't even know what it was he was trying to say as a flood of emotion overcame him as if everything his mind was going through came crashing to the surface at once. His fists were clenched so tight that his knuckles turned white. He lashed out, throwing the small table across the room. It crashed into the wall and broke in half, as did the little birdhouse and all the other decorations on it. Ron dropped to his knees, his head in his hands.

"Ron…" Ginny walked to him and knelt down beside him, holding him as he continued sobbing uncontrollably. Harry sat next to them and placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. They stayed with him until he went silent. Harry looked at Ginny, who nodded at him, and he got out his wand. In an act of mercy, he pointed it at Ron and waved it. Ron fell instantly into a dreamless sleep.


	12. Chapter 12- Thinking of You

The healers at St. Mungo's kept Hermione asleep for the first few days she was there and on those rare occasions when she was awake she was often confused about why she was there in the first place. Everything that happened that night seemed like such a distant, fuzzy memory to her that she wasn't even sure it was real, but every time she moved a sharp stabbing pain shot through her chest and she remembered just how real it was. Harry was the only visitor she was allowed other than her parents and as much as it pained him, he had to remind her each time.

"When can I see Ron?" She asked Harry this every day when she woke up, and today was no different.

"I don't know. I reckon when the healers say you can." Harry gave her the same answer as gently as he could every time, today was no different.

She sat there contemplating his answer, the same familiar one he gave her every day she was there. She sat up to look at him, grimacing and breathing through the pain it took to do so.

"Harry… do you think, if Ron and I…," She was tired and uncomfortable, and she didn't know how to ask what had been on her mind the whole time she had been there so far, so she just blurted it out, without pretext. "If Ron and I were married, do you think… do you think he'd be allowed to see me?"

"If you were married?" Harry was caught off guard by her question but couldn't tell her anything but the truth. "Yeah. I think so."

She slowly laid back down in her bed, enduring quite a bit of pain in her chest to do so. She knew she should feel angry at Ron, or even scared of him, for what he did to her to put her in the hospital in the first place, but she wasn't. If she didn't know what he had been going through these last few years, she probably would be scared of him at the very least, but she did know about all of his troubles, and she knew exactly why this happened. So instead, she worried about him and how this was affecting him, wanting to make sure he was doing okay. But there was nothing she could do without being able to see him, so she stared at the ceiling, thinking about Harry's answer until she fell asleep.

It wasn't until a few days later that she finally received the okay from the healers that she could have other visitors. The Weasleys were the first to visit her- Molly and Arthur, Ginny, George and Angelina, and even Bill and Fleur, the latter of whom was just starting to show a small baby bump, showed up to check in on her. As thrilled as she was to see them all, she was constantly waiting for Ron to show up. It was the same thing when Neville and Hannah visited her with Hagrid the next day, and once again when she got an unlikely visitor in Mona, her younger co-worker, later that same day. As much as she enjoyed having visitors it was confusing that not one of them asked what happened to her, which she later found out was Harry's doing, as he told them all if they asked her about it they should be glad they were already in a hospital.

"Harry?" Hermione asked weakly as night approached and she was exhausted from her visitors. "When can I see Ron?"

"Soon, Hermione." He smiled reassuringly at her, but deep down he didn't know. "I promise. I think he just wants to wait so he can see you alone."

"I'm worried about him." She leaned her head back against the pillow, thinking back to the question she asked him a few nights before before falling asleep.

The next morning, after the healers checked in on her and gave her another round of entirely unpleasant potions to drink, they told her that she would be able to go home soon, the next day to be exact. While Hermione was happy to hear this and glad that the stabbing pain she felt in her chest was beginning to go away, she still wanted Ron to visit her, even if it was just for five minutes. She distracted herself with a copy of the Daily Prophet like she did each morning she was stuck there until she smelled something good and heard a soft knock on her door.

"Hey…" Ron was standing there with a nervous smile and a bag in hand. "I brought breakfast. Thought you might be sick of hospital food."

"Ron!" Hermione excitedly shot up in her bed and did her best to hide how much it hurt to get up that quickly.

"Whoa whoa whoa." He rushed over to her and stopped her from getting out of bed. "Take it easy, Hermio-"

He couldn't finish saying her name because she grabbed him by his collar and pulled his lips down on to hers, kissing him like she hadn't seen him in years.

"Where have you been!?" Their kiss was over as suddenly as it had begun, Hermione hitting him in the arm as it ended. "I've been worried sick about you!" All the excitement and emotion suddenly coursing through her was a bit much and she fell back against her pillows, catching her breath.

"You were worried about me?! I-" Ron took the seat beside her bed. "Are you mental?"

"They do have me on at least four different healing potions right now, so, maybe a little bit?" She saw the guilty look in his eyes and tried a joke, with mixed results. "Did you make eggy bread?" She asked excitedly, which was much more effective than a joke at distracting Ron from his guilty conscience.

"Yeah, I know it's your favorite." Ron nodded and started pulling breakfast out of the bag. He set it up for them and watched Hermione tear into hers. Ron picked at his a little bit, but he couldn't focus on it as he got more anxious until he couldn't keep it in anymore and stood up. "So that's it, then? We're just going to sit here and eat breakfast like nothing happened? Aren't you mad at me or… something!?"

Hermione, while surprised by his outburst, just smiled at him as she swallowed a bit of her breakfast. She was proud of him, admiring how much he had grown emotionally over the past year. The Ron of a year ago would have tried to get through this without saying anything and sulk endlessly, and as much as it pained her to admit it, it might have been enough to tear them apart. Now, though, she didn't think anything could do that to them.

"Ron," She winced as she sat up in her bed, taking his hand. "I love you, and of course I'm concerned about what happened, but right now, I'm just happy to be with you. Is that okay? Can we just be together, for now?"

Ron nodded, understanding because he missed her too, before digging into his breakfast.

They spent the entire day together, disturbed only by the healers when it was time for her afternoon round of potions. Once night came Ron passed out holding hands with her from the chair next to her bed, long after she did. He stayed up as late as he could, scared he might hurt her again if he fell asleep, but being with her calmed his troubled mind, and eventually, he fell into a peaceful sleep too.


	13. Chapter 13- EZ

In the morning Hermione got discharged from St. Mungo's after spending over a week there. Mona, being the ever-accommodating apprentice that Hermione had come to know, arranged for them to be picked up in a large black muggle taxi. Hermione told the driver to take them to Ron's place, citing that she needed some peace and quiet away from the center of a busy London. It was a quiet ride, as they both knew that eventually, they would have to talk about what happened. When they arrived, the first thing Hermione did was take a shower. She undressed and stood beneath the hot water for a long time, thinking about her future. When she was done she started getting dressed. Having already pulled on a pair of pajama pants, she was about to put on one of Ron's old Chudley Cannons t-shirts when she caught sight of herself in the mirror and froze, looking at herself.

Ron heard the water turn off and went to take a shower himself when he saw her standing there, topless, staring at her scar in the mirror. She traced the length of it back and forth a few times like she was stuck in a trance. It stretched diagonally across her torso, from the top of her shoulder to just above her hip, and was thick and raised along most of it. She finally saw Ron standing behind her in the mirror.

"It's not very subtle, is it?" She said in a distant voice.

"No, guess not…" Ron reluctantly agreed with her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"It'll show through some of my clothes... but, I could hide it, maybe?" She placed her arm over her chest to hide as much of her scar as she could, remembering what she used to look like before, her voice trembling. "What do you think?"

"Hiding it doesn't sound like you…" Ron pulled her arm back down so her scar was revealed again. It would be an ever-present reminder to both of them. He would never be able to see it and not immediately picture the haunting memory of that night.

"No, I suppose not." She replied sadly. "Are you okay, Ron?" Her eyes finally left her scar and met his in the mirror. "What's wrong?"

"You wouldn't have that scar if it wasn't for me." He paused and took a deep breath. "I can still see you laying there, covered in…" He turned away and took a few steps to hide himself from her. "You can't just hope it'll never happen again. One day, I'm going to do something a lot worse than give you a scar, and I-" Ron couldn't go on at the thought of it.

"Ron, I won't pretend I'm not worried, but I had a lot of time to think while I was at St. Mungo's about how to help you." She groaned in pain as she pulled on his much-too-big-for-her t-shirt. She placed her hands on his hips and rested her head against the back of his shoulder. "We can figure this out, and if we can't we can get help. It's not hopeless."

"You sure about that?" Ron found some comfort in her words but was still unsure.

"Absolutely." She turned him around so they could face one another. "I actually had time to think about a lot of different things..." She trailed off and Ron was left standing there waiting for her to say something.

"...like what?" He looked at her curiously.

"Well..." Her breathing began to quicken a little as her nervousness set in as she considered what she was about to say to him. At the last second, she got nervous and thought of something else entirely off topic. "...The Cannons! Yeah, their last match.. a-and how... their one chaser, umm... oh I forget his name, and how he scored so many goals. So… maybe they're going to do better this year?"

Ron just stared at her for a moment in complete confusion. "You thought a lot about Quidditch?"

"Mmhmm" She nodded and smiled a thoroughly unconvincing smile at him. "I had so much time to read the Prophet while I was there that I got really into it."

"Hermione, in the Cannons' last game, every one of their Chasers got knocked out by a bludger in the first seven minutes. They didn't score at all, and the Seeker got concussed when he flew into one of the hoops. Surprisingly, it was one of their better losses this season."

"Oh, right… Must have been a different match I was thinking about…" She unsuccessfully tried to cover her already poor attempt to change the subject and she knew it.

"Hermione, you only bring up quidditch when you're trying to change the subject, so..."

"I know…" she took a deep breath before continuing. "When I first woke up, in the hospital," She started slowly, struggling to choose her words carefully. "And I saw my parents and Harry there, I was disappointed. I mean- I don't mean I wasn't happy to see them. I was. They did a brilliant job taking care of me and keeping my spirits up, but..." She moved closer to him again and took his hands, her heart racing. "I wanted you, Ron, but Harry said…" She choked back her tears remembering how alone she felt without him during that first week. "He said they were only letting in family, and he was only allowed because he took me there in the first place and personally I think being Harry Potter had something to do with it too, but…" She was getting bogged down in the minutiae of it all and looked down at the ground, getting frustrated with her inability to just say what she wanted to say, having practiced it repeatedly in her head, nothing was coming out how she wanted it to.

"Whatever it is, just say it, Hermione." Ron said in a sympathetic tone.

"I don't want anyone to ever be able to keep us apart." She looked back up at him with resolve. "Not for any reason. Ever."

"What are you getting at?" Ron eyed her with some uncertainty, not at all sure just what she was talking about.

"Ron…" She hesitated for a moment, staring at him, making sure one last time that this was the decision she wanted to make. She smiled when she realized it was the right one. "What I'm getting at is… the only reason you weren't allowed to see me is that we aren't family, so I want to change that."

"You want to change that?" Thoroughly confused at first, it took him a moment but Ron finally understood what she was saying and his face lit up with excitement. "Are you saying what I think you're saying? You're sure about this?"

She nodded and smiled enthusiastically as she threw her arms around his neck. He lifted her off the ground a little, which was painful for her, but she was so ecstatic that in the moment she didn't even notice it and kissed him passionately.

Some time later, the informally engaged couple finally separated from one another, Ron pulling his shirt back on over his head and Hermione tightening the drawcord on her lounge pants.

"You know, I don't think the healers would be very happy about me doing such rigorous activities the same day I got discharged," Hermione said playfully as she got out of bed with a slight wince. She left the room to get a quill and some parchment. "You're a bad influence on me, Ronald Weasley."

"Yeah, probably a little bit." He grinned proudly. "What're you doing?"

"We have to tell Harry and Ginny!" She replied excitedly from the other room as she sat at the table and began writing a letter to them, very briefly explaining to them the good news.

"Oh yeah, guess we should." He said with a chuckle as he sat down next to her. "You know what we should do? Call another D.A. meeting. They'd go mental."

"Ron, they'd just say 'It's about time, you two.' and that would be the end of it." She shook her head at the thought of it, but she had to admit it would still be fun to share the news with everyone.

"Still, we could do it anyway."

"Fine. But that means we can only tell a few people right now." She conceded as she sealed up the first letter. She dropped it through a slot next to the window, flicked her wand and within minutes there was an owl arriving and taking her letter to its destination. "Harry and Ginny are done. I suppose we should tell our parents next?"

"Are you a lunatic?" He laughed. "It's easy for your parents to keep a secret all the way in Australia, but when Mum hears about this she's going to tell everyone."

"Oh, right. Good point." On her way to the kitchen to make some tea she walked by Ron and gave him a tender kiss on the top of his head. "Want some chamomile?" She grinned before disappearing and putting a full kettle on the stove, lighting the fire with her wand.

"Haha…" Ron laughed sarcastically. He lit the fireplace with his wand and thought for a moment about their future together and smiled. "Mum is, honestly, going to go mental when she finds out she's going to get more grandkids… You remember how she got with Bill and Fleur?"

"Yeah…" Hermione's voice was suddenly filled with anxiousness. Her whole body stopped as if she were frozen in time. _I didn't say it right… I only told him...  
_  
She didn't know how long she was stuck like that, but the kettle had been whistling for some time, and she was only startled back to reality when she heard Ron ask if she needed help. "No. No, I'm fine." Her hands were shaking badly and she was having trouble breathing as she moved through the kitchen in a daze and reached for the kettle without using an oven mitt. "OW!"

"Hermione?" Ron rushed into the kitchen to check on her, the kettle still whistling. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Ron. I'm fine." She replied, flustered. She grabbed her wand and pointed it at her burned hand. "Episkey." She saw the burn on her fingers beginning to go away as the pain subsided. "I just burned my hand on this stupid kettle, that will not stop making so much noise!"

The way she flicked her wand to put out the flame under the kettle caught Ron's attention. It was unrefined and a little out of control, highly uncharacteristic for her. Ron watched her hurrying through his small kitchen, trying to get their tea together, but she kept forgetting one thing or another and had to keep going back to the other side to get it. Clearly, something was wrong, but he had no idea what it could have been. He blocked her path and put his hands on her shoulders to stop her. The second he did she pulled away from him and refused to look at him.

"I'm sorry, Ron… I'm so sorry…" She knew what she had to tell him, but she couldn't believe she had to do it again. "I'm such an idiot..."

"What are you talking about?" He moved so that he was in front of her again. "You just burned your hand. It's already healed up."

"It's not the burn…" She shook her head and finally looked at him. "Ron, when I said I wanted to be your family I meant _I_ wanted to be your family. Just you and me. Just... us."

"Oh…" Ron didn't know what to say to her. He hadn't thought much about having kids since they last talked about it because he was so focused on the present, but when she said she wanted to be a family he realized that he never changed his mind about it, not even a little bit.

"Ron?" She asked with cautious concern as he silently stood there. The silence was killing her so she started speaking again, trying to explain herself a little better. "I wasn't thinking clearly before. I should have better explained what I meant."

"Why?" He looked up at her almost like she was a stranger that had offended him in some way, his tone hinting at some sense of self-righteousness. "Before, you never said why and now I want to know."

"Why? I-" The look he gave her was one she never saw from him before and it completely changed the mood of the conversation. It caught her off guard and made her feel defensive. She didn't know how to respond to him at first because she never had to give someone a reason before, she wasn't even sure if she had one. "I- I want to travel, for starters," She started a little unsure of herself, just blurting something out. "That's why I took my post in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, so I could travel to places like New York and see the MACUSA, and I've heard that Mahoutokoro Wizarding School is just breathtakingly beautiful-"

"But we could still do all that." Ron impatiently interrupted her, clearly not accepting it as a very good answer. "You can travel with kids, Hermione. I mean, my parents took seven of us to Egypt. It's not that hard."

"I know that, Ron," Hermione replied defensively, making a feeble attempt to hide it. She racked her brain to think of another reason, but she didn't have one, other than the simplest one, which she didn't think Ron would find acceptable at all. Exasperated, she spoke again. "What do you want me to say?"

"I just want to know why!" Ron's facade of self-righteousness cracked, the pain that came from finding out the woman he loved didn't want the same future as him, and what that might mean, finally breaking through.

"I don't know why Ron! I don't have a perfect answer for you." Hermione dropped her guard and felt a surge of emotions come flooding to the surface. It took all her strength not to burst at that moment. "It's just not what I want… I only want you. You're all I need."

"That- It doesn't make any sense..." He could understand exactly what she was saying if he wasn't so terrified of what might be happening to them, but what he genuinely couldn't understand, what hurt him the most, was that he didn't understand how this could be happening at all. How they could survive Voldemort, giant snakes, Death Eaters, Horcruxes, armies of dark wizards, and everything else the world could throw at them, but it always seemed to be themselves that they had to fight the hardest for.

"Please, Ron…" She walked over to him and placed her head against his, whispering. "Please try to understand…"

"I'm trying, Hermione, but I-" His hands pulled her against him, wanting so badly to feel her close to him again in a vain effort that maybe he could picture a future that was just the two of them. But the only future he could see had small children with freckles and bushy red hair running around the house. For once Ron was listening to his mind more than his heart. He pulled away from her. "I can't do it, Hermione…"

"Ron, please. Ron..." She could barely breathe now and pulled him back to her, her hands gripping at his shirt, trying desperately to hang on to him. "What if we take more time to think about it? Or- or- We could-" She didn't have another idea and at that moment she felt as far from being the brightest witch of her age than she ever had before. For once, Hermione was following her heart more than her mind.

"I can't see it…" He pulled away from her again, her hands holding onto him for as long as possible before he was just out of reach.

"What are you saying?" She knew what was coming, but couldn't bring herself to believe it.

"I can't see... us. Just us…" He had been avoiding eye contact with her until now when he finally found the courage to say what he knew was coming. "If you can't see more than just us in our future, Hermione, then... I think you should go..."

"I can't, Ron. I can't see our future the way you do." Hermione forced herself into his arms one more time, pulling his head down against hers again and kissing him frantically. She knew now more clearly than ever before that her greatest fault was to always need him. She remembered what it was like when they were in school, how painful it was for her to be so in love with him and to never have it returned, and she couldn't bear to lose him now, so she plead with him, desperate to have him just a little longer, her heart overriding any rational thoughts she might have had. "Ron, love, please…"

"Hermione-" Ron couldn't stop himself from kissing her back every time she kissed him. It only made it harder for him and he couldn't find his voice, not with her so close to him and dangling the same carrot of a possible, but unlikely future in front of him that he dangled in front of her months ago.

"Please… " She cut him off, desperate for him to know what might happen if he requested a lapse in her presence one more time. "Ron, listen to me… If you ask me to leave again, I'm scared that I'll do it." Her voice was trembling so badly now she could barely get out her words. "I'm scared I won't come back…"

"Hermione…" Ron could barely get out her name. He heard every word she said but it wasn't fair to her, or to him, to want such drastically different futures and pretend they didn't. There were countless moments where he almost told her to stay as he tried to get the courage to say anything at all, but when he did, those countless moments were gone. "I think you should go…"

Hermione disapparated from him almost immediately, leaving him alone with the sound of the crackling fire. He questioned and second-guessed himself for a long time after she left. Part of him wanted to run to her, tell her that they could do it and they could both be happy and get what they wanted, but every time he pictured a future with her one of them was unhappy and resentful that they had been forced into a life that only the other one wanted. It seemed so surreal to him in that moment that he wasn't even sure it had happened because for once, for maybe the first time in their relationship, Ron was the sure voice of reason, and it killed him. It wasn't until he saw the two teacups she had gotten out for them that it hit him that what happened was in fact very real.

He heard someone knocking on his front door. He rushed to it, his heart hoping that she had come back to him, but his mind knew it wasn't her.

It was Harry and Ginny at the door with a bottle of champagne.

"About time, you two." Ginny said with a bright smile as she walked in the door, forcing herself past Ron.

"Took you long enough, mate. Congratulations!" Harry smiled and clapped Ron on the shoulder as he walked past him after Ginny.

Harry popped the bottle of champagne and grabbed them some glasses while Ginny looked around for Hermione but didn't see her. The only evidence that she was there were the two teacups in the kitchen and her bag from the hospital still sitting on the floor near the front door. It was when she looked at Ron, who was still standing in the doorway looking outside, that she realized something wasn't right.

"Ron?" Ginny walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Now that she really stopped to look at him she could see that he had been crying. She pulled him back inside and hurriedly waved Harry over to them. "Ron, what happened?"


	14. Chapter 14- Lose You

"Hermione! Open up!" Harry knocked on her door for the third time. "Come on, Hermione! It's Harry!" Still getting no response, he began to get more worried than he already was. It was the day after Ron and Hermione split up, this time for good, he feared. Ron told him and Ginny everything and why they split up, which was almost just as heartbreaking for them as it was for Ron and Hermione because it was a very real and very legitimate reason.

"Hermione!" Harry called her one last time before getting out the repaired penknife he had received from his Godfather that could open any lock or undo any knot. He turned the handle on the doorknob as he inserted the blade between the door and the doorframe and opened the door.

"Are you home, Hermione?" Harry tried calling again. Not getting a response, he looked around. He couldn't find any evidence that she had been there recently except for a few open and empty drawers in her bedroom. He was about to leave to look elsewhere for her when he saw some folded up parchment sitting out on a table, addressed to him and Ginny. He read it, deciphering the bits of smudged, watermarked ink.

 _Harry and Ginny,_

 _I'm sure by now you know what happened. I'm going to Australia to see my parents. I think I need to get away for awhile. I'll keep in touch._

 _I love you both dearly,_

 _Hermione_

Harry sighed, locked her door and, with great sadness, he apparated home to tell Ginny.

Hermione drifted through the airport with a vacant expression on her face as the rest of the flyers surrounding her rushed to their destinations. She bought her ticket, checked in, passed security and arrived at her gate just as the plane was boarding and barely said a word to anyone unless she had to. Behind her vacant expression, she was completely heartbroken. As much as it pained her mind to understand that maybe she didn't belong with Ron after all, her heart ached terribly for him. All she wanted to do was apparate off the plane, a terrible idea for a number of reasons, and tell him she changed her mind and wanted more kids than they would know what to do with. But it wouldn't be true, it wouldn't be fair, and it was crushing.

She boarded and took her seat on the aisle shortly before the plane started moving. She fastened her seatbelt and pushed herself back against her seat, taking some deep breaths.

"Don't like flying, dear?" The kindly old woman sitting next to her noticed her apprehension.

"No. Not always." Hermione replied, thinking about the time she flew on the Hippogriff Buckbeak in her third year of school.

"Just try not to think about it too much." The woman next to her said sympathetically and patted her on the leg. "I used to hate flying too before my husband helped me get over it."

"That's... lovely," Hermione replied politely as she started to tear up a little when the woman mentioned her husband helping her fly unafraid, a reminder of the life she almost had.

"It's not just the flying, is it dear?" The woman asked, her intuition telling her it was something more.

Hermione was silent for a moment before shaking her head.

"No, it's not."

The engines started to power up for takeoff and Hermione lost her breath for a moment. If she was going to do any last second, movielike grand gestures, it was in this moment. But she knew she couldn't do that, Ron made it quite clear that he didn't think they could be together. So she sat still and rediscovered her breath and felt another tear escape her. She wiped it from her cheek as the plane lifted up, the ground quickly disappearing beneath them.

"It'll be all right, dear." The old woman smiled kindly at her. "Do you love him? Or her?"

"I-" Hermione was caught off guard at how intuitive this woman was. She swallowed the lump in her throat. "It's him. And yes…"

"And he loves you?"

Hermione nodded, barely able to hold back her tears any longer.

"I'm sorry, dear. Come here."

The old woman opened her arms and Hermione leaned into her. She stayed like this for a long time, silently crying. She had done plenty of crying by herself in the last twenty-four hours to think she was finally done. She felt better not being alone, even if that comfort came from a kind stranger.

"Sorry..." Hermione slowly pulled away from the woman and wiped her eyes as the tears stopped. "And thank you…"

"You're welcome, dear." She smiled kindly and pulled out a book of crossword puzzles and a pencil. "If you feel like you need another good cry, I'll be right here the whole time."

Hermione just smiled in appreciation and nodded. Thanks to the distractions brought on by numerous different muggle and magical books she had packed, the rest of her flight was mostly uneventful and she barely thought of Ron except when she heard someone a few rows away ask if they had rum raisin ice cream available. It swiftly and unapologetically caused her to burst into tears again, once again finding comfort in the old woman sitting next to her. She was sad when she approached her first layover and she and the woman had to part ways. Hermione thanked her profusely and they exchanged information. When they parted Hermione looked at the woman's information she had written down and saw her surname was Goshawk. She turned to look for her, to find out if there was any relation to the famed magical author Miranda Goshawk, but she was gone. She turned back and hurried to catch her next flight.


	15. Chapter 15- Sleep Better

Six months after she left England for Australia, Hermione finally felt like she was taking control of her life again. While she stayed with her parents she traveled some, mostly as a distraction to herself, visiting the Mahoutokoro Wizarding School school in Japan, and New York City, visiting both muggle and magical destinations while there. She kept in touch with The Potters by owl, who kept her apprised of events back home. Their letters never mentioned Ron and she never asked about him, despite the fact that she thought about him quite a lot, even if she thought about him with anger and frustration at times. She would consider herself a fool if she didn't still miss and ache for the man she loved for so many years.

After those first six months of staying with her parents, Hermione knew she had a decision to make. As much as she missed her native home, her friends, and where she grew up, Australia was good for her. Although she knew she would have to find her own place one day, she enjoyed living with her parents again, and there was a small magical population in Sydney that she had come to enjoy, and aside from the much stricter laws regarding protection, importing, and exporting of magical beasts, their wizarding laws were comparable to those at home, which is why she chose Sydney over the United States and their more rigid secrecy and wand registration laws.

She was currently on her way to a job interview with a muggle agency that assisted the homeless with finding work and getting back on their feet. Dressed very professionally, she stepped off the bus and hurried towards the building entrance, trying to not be late, even though at this point she was still forty-five minutes early. Something stopped her in her tracks just as she was about to enter the building and she stared off into the distance at a flash of red hair that was caught by the sunlight.

"Get it together, Hermione," She said to herself, shaking it off and walking inside. "There are plenty of gingers in the world, you can't go on thinking every other one you see is him…" This happened to her more often than she would have liked to admit, even ruining the first interview she went on several weeks earlier when it had gotten her so flustered that she had trouble forming complete sentences.

When her interview was over she felt confident that it had gone well and left the building with a little bit of a bounce in her step. She couldn't wait to get home to tell her parents how well it went, so instead of taking the bus, she ducked into an alcove around the corner and disapparated back home.

"Mom! Dad!" Hermione called out to them as she walked through the front door. "That went really well!" Setting down her bag, she was so excited that she didn't notice the extra jackets hanging up beside the door that didn't belong to any of the Grangers. "I think the search is finally over-" She was completely blindsided when she saw Harry and Ginny sitting at the dining room table having tea with her parents. Tears of joy immediately formed in her eyes and she ran towards them both, wrapping them both in one enormous hug before either of them could stand up. It caused some discomfort for them but gave her parents a good laugh and their own feeling of joy seeing their daughter so happy after an incredibly rough six months.

"I've missed you both so much!" She finally pulled away, a huge smile on her face. "Why- I mean what brings you here?"

"Well," Harry smiled at Ginny. "It didn't feel right not to tell you in person."

"Tell me what?" Hermione replied, some excitement and trepidation in her voice.

Ginny stood up from the table and turned to show Hermione her pregnant belly. Hermione completely lost it at that point and let out a high pitched scream as feelings of joy and happiness completely washed over her.

"Congratulations!" She hugged her tightly and then Harry. "I'm so happy for you both!" She got as much information as she could from them, learning that Ginny was eighteen weeks pregnant and that everything was going as well as it possibly could be.

"As much fun as it's been to see you both, we really must be going." Hermione's parents both stood up. Her mother continued. "We have tickets for a show in town tonight. Harry, Ginny, congratulations again. We are so happy for you both."

They all said their goodbyes and it was just the three of them now. They moved into the living room to be a bit more comfortable and Hermione beamed at them the entire time. She was so excited and happy for them that the room felt like it was about a hundred degrees hotter than normal, so she pulled off the blazer she was wearing and sat there in a sleeveless. Harry immediately noticed it, but as they talked Ginny seemed unaware and didn't notice that Hermione's scar was completely gone.

"We didn't just come here to tell you I'm pregnant, Hermione…" Ginny smiled happily at her and then looked at Harry.

"Oh, right. Yeah." Harry was startled from his thoughts about her scar and a wide smile spread across his face. "Well, we wanted to know if you would like to be his Godmother?"

"Of course! I would be honored to be his… his? You're having a boy? Have you picked a name yet?" She asked excitedly.

"Yeah." Harry nodded enthusiastically. "James Sirius Potter."

"I think that's lovely. I'm sure they would both be proud to have your son named after them, Harry."

"Thanks. I think so too."

The three of them continued talking but Hermione retreated into herself a little upon realizing that neither of them mentioned anything about a Godfather for James. She looked at them curiously, knowing deep down what their answer was going to be, but her inquisitive mind had to know so she had to ask.

"Ginny, I'm so happy you asked me to be his godmother, and I was just wondering, who did you ask to be his godfather?"

"We didn't really know how to tell you this," Ginny began slowly. "but it's Ron. He already said yes when we asked him last week."

"Oh…" Hermione smiled, her voice a little distant and distracted. She wondered how he would take the news that she was willing to be a parent to someone else's child but not to mother his, but hoped he would be able to understand the differences between the two. "Of course. He'll be a great Uncle and a great Godfather."

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I-"

"It's okay, Ginny. I don't expect you to pretend like he doesn't exist when I'm around." She said with a small, forced laugh. "Honestly, that would be absurd."

She trailed off a little bit and looked down at her hands. She told herself that at some point she would have to stop pretending she wasn't curious about him and, even if she didn't want to admit it to herself, that she was a little worried about him too. She looked back up at them with a strong face, but her voice betrayed her and showed her uncertainty.

"How is he?"

Harry didn't know exactly what he should or shouldn't tell her. Her hesitation to even ask about him told him it was probably better to ease her into it.

"It was rough at first, especially when he found out you left. It took him a while, but he's doing better." Seeing that she seemed to be taking that news well, he continued. "Oh, and he left the Ministry and finally took that job with George at the shop."

"Good! Good…" She replied with strained enthusiasm. She didn't know what answer she wanted from them, but she would have had mixed emotions either way. If he was good, part of her would be upset he wasn't still in constant pain and pining for her to come back, and vice versa. Though there was one nagging question that she had to ask, even if she didn't want to. "And, the… sleeping problems?"

"He hasn't told us about anything happening in months. I think the change in career has been good for him."

"That's great," Hermione replied, clearly distracted. The conversation continued but she couldn't stop thinking about Ron. Even as she filled them in on life in Sydney that she couldn't fit into her letters she had trouble staying focused on some of the more mundane things she would tell them about. She often got distracted wondering if he thought about her at all, and whether or not she wanted him to.

They talked well into the night and long after Hermione's parents got home. Harry and Ginny spent the night and the next day they toured both muggle and magical Sydney with Hermione, which gave her distracted mind something else to focus on. She showed them some of her favorite places and what magical life was like, but saved the best for last and took them to Jamison Valley to show them the Antipodean Opaleye dragon colony, something, Hermione remembered, Charlie Weasley had always wanted to see himself. The three of them said their goodbyes later that evening and Hermione returned home feeling happy and full again for the first time since before her split with Ron. It was bittersweet though, as it was exactly that feeling that made it difficult for her to sleep that night because after Harry and Ginny left her, it was also the most alone she had felt since she first arrived.


	16. Chapter 16- Social Development Dance

Hermione had been working at her new job in Sydney for a muggle charity agency for a few months. She sat in a meeting room in one of the lower floors of a Sydney high-rise building with the rest of her colleagues so she could begin their meeting with an investor who could provide some much-needed funding for them. It was exactly the kind of thing she didn't like doing in her new job, much preferring to work with those they were trying to help instead, but meetings like this one were the price she had to pay to do that.

Sitting there she lost herself in thought as she stared at the square down below, filled with water fountains, chess tables, food carts, and some patches of grass where someone could lay down and relax for a bit. Sometimes families would pass by and they would stop and let their kids run around and play around the fountains for a while. It brought a small smile to her face as she pictured doing exactly that with her soon-to-be-born godson. She was brought back to reality when the potential investor showed up and the meeting was ready to begin.

The meeting was nearly over when Hermione got up and gave her part of the presentation, always going last because her coworkers found her to be a difficult act to follow. She was about halfway through her part when it happened again, a flash of red hair caught her attention, this time from the square below. It threw off the rhythm of her presentation for a moment, but she was able to recover and continue until she noticed that the red-haired person down below was sitting at one of the chess tables. It completely overtook her and her presentation abruptly stopped as she drifted to the window, staring curiously at the red-headed figure while she had flashbacks of Ron playing muggle chess in London's Holland Park on Sunday mornings while she would lay in the grass and read.

"Miss Granger?" One of her coworkers gently touched her arm, a concerned look on their face. "Are you alright?"

"Yes." She quickly realized just what she had been doing and cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, I just, I thought I saw something." She shook her head and smiled at the potential investors and continued her presentation, albeit not with the strong finish she had become known for among her coworkers, though it was just good enough for them to impress the investors and get the funding they needed. She was still shaken up at the end of the meeting, but pushed through it and agreed to get a congratulatory drink with her coworkers to celebrate staying open for a few more months, much to their amazement that Hermione would finally be joining them for the first time.

"You guys go ahead without me, I'll catch up." Hermione told her coworkers before she made her way to the chess tables. She didn't see the red-haired person she saw sitting there earlier, but she looked around for a few minutes to see if they might still be around somewhere else.

"It wasn't him." She muttered to herself as she began walking towards the pub her coworkers went to. "You've got to stop doing this. Pull yourself together and go have fun with your coworkers. Maybe you'll actually make a new friend or two without the constant threat of being killed at any given moment."

Her night went about as well as she could have hoped for. Making new friends was sometimes just as difficult for her now as it was when she was in school, but she didn't feel like she embarrassed herself too badly outside of the work setting, except when she tried to order a Berry Ocky Rot and had to play it off as something else. She even had one guy give her his number after he had been flirting with her most of the night. It took Hermione longer than she'd care to admit to figure out what he was doing, but once she did she actually found herself attempting to innocently flirt back, something she never thought she was terribly good at considering it took her several years just to get her best friend to realize she was interested in being much more than friends. She had no intention of calling him, being one hundred percent certain she was not interested in dating anyone right now. It took all her strength just to have a normal day sometimes, but now that she was beginning to create a new life for herself it took a little less strength every day, and she was beginning to feel liberated.


	17. Chapter 17- Turn of the Century

For the next few weeks, whenever she had the chance, she took the opportunity to go the square again and relax in the grass with a nice book and enjoy herself. She would sometimes spend the whole day there just reading and watching people and listening to the sounds of her new home. Most of the time she was left to herself, so she started getting a little more adventurous with her use of magic in the square, starting with little things like a rain-repelling charm during a passing shower, or an invisible deflection charm that would automatically deflect incoming balls and frisbees, though one time she did catch an odd look from a couple of young boys when she pulled an entire baguette and cheese plate out of her small purse, and she decided that it probably wasn't the best place to be sneaking in some magic.

This day was no different from any other time she had gone to the square. It was a beautiful, sunny day without a single cloud in the sky. She was laying down in the grass near the chess tables, her usual spot, nearly asleep when she saw that flash of red hair again. She had convinced herself that it wasn't real weeks ago, and finally no longer reacting to it, and she found herself in a peaceful and relaxing sleep.

It was several hours later and dark out when she finally woke up, a little disoriented. She took a moment to get her head right and wake up a little more, the bustling square still busy underneath the soft white glow of the street lamps. She stood up and checked her watch.

"Oh no…" She said regrettably. "I'm late for dinner with Mom."

She hurried as much as she could, brushing the grass off of her and rushed towards the other end of the square, where there was a blind spot she used to apparate numerous times. Just as she turned the corner she ran into someone and knocked them down, apologizing profusely as she helped them get up.

"I'm so sorry! Are you okay? I really am sorry I have to hit and run, but I really have to go." She started running again, calling back to them. "Sorry!"

"Hermione?" The other person curiously called back to her.

The voice stopped Hermione dead in her tracks so effectively that her shoes nearly left skid marks on the concrete. She knew that voice anywhere, she grew up with that voice, and the last time she heard it was almost a year ago. In the fractions of a second that occurred between hearing the voice and now, she nearly convinced herself a half dozen times that it wasn't who she thought it was, but she couldn't explain away that the voice knew her name.

"Hermione, is that you?" The familiar voice called out to her, but closer this time, as she stood stopped just a few paces from where she could apparate away.

"Ron?" Hermione said as she finally turned around and saw him illuminated by the streetlights. She was torn between hugging him, hitting him, hexing him, or disapparating to go to dinner with her mom and pretending she never saw him.

Both of them stood there in silence, not entirely sure how to greet each other. Ron was about to say something, although he wasn't entirely sure what, but as he opened his mouth Hermione beat him to it.

"Why are you here?" She asked him and tried her best to sound friendly and polite but it came off as suspicious more than anything else. She feigned a smile to try to cover it up.

"Well," Ron didn't know what kind of greeting to expect but whatever it was he just got from Hermione stung him. "I, uh-"

"Wait." She interrupted him as something came to mind. "How long have you been here? Was that really you that I saw a few hours ago, just over there? And was that you a few weeks ago, too? Here? Playing chess?" She paused for a moment, not wanting to say or even that he might have been following her. It was an absurd thought, and one she wasn't proud of, but she didn't have another explanation at the moment.

"Yeah, that was probably me you saw," Ron replied with a slight smile he was trying to hide, mistakenly assuming that since she had seen him it meant she was looking for him.

"Why are you here, Ronald?" She asked him cautiously. For Hermione, suddenly finding your ex halfway across the world was an emotionally startling experience. Even if they were only talking for a few minutes it felt like hours to her. Her mind and her heart couldn't get on the same page, and she had trouble keeping her tone and body language polite and neutral, wavering between being angry at him and telling him she still loved him.

"Did Harry and Ginny tell you I work with George now? Well, the guy who supplies one of the ingredients for our Ten-Second Pimple Vanisher lives here in Sydney, in this building over there." He motioned to the building across from the one Hermione had a meeting in weeks ago. "He's been a bit dodgy lately with his shipments, so I've been coming down every once in a while to talk to him." Ron completely left out the part where he volunteered, or as George would put it 'insisted with extreme assertion', to come to Sydney. The fact of the matter is that Ron missed Hermione, more than he wanted to admit to anyone. "Sometimes I play chess with the muggles while I wait for him. It's a bit more boring than wizard's chess, but it passes the time."

"Oh…" His answer finally let her calm down enough to let down her guard some. It seemed like a perfectly legitimate reason why he would be on the other side of the world in the same city as her, but there was still part of her that was skeptical. "And that's it? That's the only reason you're here?"

"Well, maybe not the only reason…" Ron was a little hurt by her tone, but she was right, as usual, because that was definitely not the only reason he was there. He stepped a little closer to her. "I'm not going to say I wasn't hoping to see you, Hermione. I thought about it a lot, actually, but I didn't know if you'd want to see me…"

"I'm still trying to figure that out." Hermione crossed her arms and looked away from him. She didn't know how much longer she could be near him without having some sort of emotional collapse. Every second they were near each other was just as heartbreaking as the next. "Ron-"

"I miss you." Ron suddenly blurted out, cutting her off. He looked just as surprised as she did. He opened his mouth to continue, but Hermione beat him to it.

"Don't." She shook her head and glared at him. "Don't do this, Ron." her voice trembled slightly.

"Every day." He felt like he was at the point of no return now. Almost a year of being without her and thinking about her every single day was flooding his mind.

"Stop." Hermione felt like she was going to have a panic attack. She took a step back from him. "I won't do this with you right now."

"I don't know what I'm doing, Hermione." He shrugged, feeling defeated as he tried to find the words he had practiced in his head so many times before. "I've wanted to tell you so many different things since you left, but all it comes down to is that I miss you."

"Then you shouldn't have asked me to leave!" Hermione shouted furiously at him, drawing the eyes of some of the others in the square. Her anxiety kept rising and it was being channeled into anger both at him and herself. She was coming to the realization that, despite thinking she was healing and getting over him, she was mostly avoiding everything she should have been dealing with more directly. Her anger was gone, and her words were left with nothing but the pain and hurt feelings she was avoiding ever since she got to Sydney. "Then you shouldn't have asked me to leave."

"I know…" Ron said quietly. She was almost close enough for him to reach out and touch her if he took a step forward. So he did, but just as he stepped forward, she stepped back.

"I- I have to go…" Hermione sniffled and rubbed the tears from her eyes. "Mom's waiting for me…" She turned and quickly walked away from him.

"Hermione, wait!" Ron chased after her, placing a hand on her shoulder. When she tried to slip away from him her sleeve fell off her shoulder, and Ron noticed what wasn't there anymore. "Hermione? What happened to… it's gone."

"What?" She looked at what he was pointing to and it took her a moment to realize she was supposed to be looking at her shoulder. "Oh…"

For a moment she considered lying and telling him that there was a muggle plastic surgeon who helped her or some magical salve derived from the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, but Ron knew sectumsempra was a notoriously tricky spell to heal, and that she was lucky to have healed from it at all.

"I've been hiding it. It was… easier. It helped me forget." She pulled out her wand and discreetly cast Specialis Revelio nonverbally on herself. Her scar reappeared, looking exactly how it did before. She grimaced at the sight of it and it nearly brought her to tears, not because of how it looked, but because of the memories it contained, some happy, some sad. She pulled her sleeve back onto her shoulder and covered it up, but it was still visible against her form-fitting shirt, the entire way from her shoulder to her hip.

"I almost forgot how terrible it looks."

"Hermione..." He didn't know what else to say to her as she started to walk away again, but he didn't want her to leave. "Can we please talk or something?"

"About what, exactly?" She turned around quickly, losing her patience. If it wasn't such a busy area and they hadn't drawn so much attention to themselves already she would have already disapparated.

Ron's heart was pounding with excitement, anxiety, terror, and everything in between. He had so many words but not one of them came out.

"You can't do this to me. It isn't fair." She wanted to run in the other direction, but she refused and stood her ground. "I have a life here now. You can't just show up here and tell me you miss me and hope that maybe things will work out for us." She wiped her eyes, her voice shaking badly with anger and sadness. "I begged you, Ron!" She shouted at him and pushed him backward. "I begged you to let me stay, but you wouldn't, and now you're here, and the first time you see me you do… whatever this is?"

"I didn't want it to happen like this," Ron replied regretfully, shaking his head. "I didn't expect to see you tonight, or to do any of this."

"Then how did you-" Hermione wanted to tear into him but she could see the confusion in him, something she had seen numerous times before, and it cut through her anger and frustration. She felt sympathy for him because she felt the same way he did. She was anywhere and everywhere on the emotional spectrum at any given moment and seconds away from either taking him back or telling him to shove his head up the backside of an erumpent. She tried to find some middle ground as she approached him.

"Ron," She reached out hesitantly and took his hand. The sensation of his skin touching hers was familiar, warm, and welcoming. It felt like home and forced her to smile a little. Above all, it calmed her and let her see things clearly, which also brought her great sadness.

"There can't be an 'us'. We want different things. Can you tell me, honestly, that ten or twenty years from now that you won't resent me because you gave up having children for me? Or that I won't resent you for giving you children I never wanted? Because I can't tell you that. It's a life that wouldn't be fair to either of us."

"We can try anyway, can't we?" He almost couldn't get the words out as the lump in his throat grew too large to ignore. He knew it wasn't true though, as much as he didn't want to admit it.

"You know we can't…" She replied softly and felt years of love and affection for him flowing through her all at once. She put her hands on either side of his face and pulled his lips down to hers in a deep, tender kiss. Ron kissed her back, pulling her closer to him. After so many years, and so much time apart, it still felt like the first time, for both of them. The kiss didn't last long, but there was an understanding behind it, that they could both finally begin to accept that maybe they weren't destined for each other after all. Slowly, it came to an end, neither of them quite wanting to stop.

"Whoa…" Ron caught his breath and came back to earth. "We can still do that sometimes, right?"

"Ronald Weasley, you are absolutely a bad influence on me…" Hermione grinned playfully, slowly pulling away from him and stepping back, holding his hands for a brief moment before finally letting go of him.

"Yeah, probably a little bit…" He grinned.

She was wondering where they went on from there, and she thought of James, their soon-to-be-born godson. There was no way they could have both been in his life if every time they saw each other they were going to become a complete and total wreck. As much she enjoyed what they were sharing now, she knew they would have to work on being friends again, or at least try.

"Ron," She smiled nervously at him. "What about James?"

"What about him?" Ron asked, not sure where she was going.

"Well, we can't exactly risk blowing up at each other like this every time we see him together."

"Yeah, guess not." Ron looked down, not wanting to say what she was alluding to. Despite knowing it was the right thing, it was hard because he knew it would mean they were really over. "So what do we do? Go back to being friends again?"

"I think we have to at least try." She replied with a sadness in her eyes, knowing it was really going to be over for them. "I don't remember what that was like, but we should try."

"It's easy." Ron with a confident grin. "I'll play exploding snap with Harry all night, then copy off your History of Magic homework before class."

"You will not." She feigned a glare at him before the two of them laughed. She thought to herself that if this was a glimpse into the future, she would be okay with that.

"Are you still going to be here tomorrow?" Hermione asked him nervously.

"Yeah. I can't leave before I see this guy." He motioned to the building his Ten-Second Pimple Vanisher supplier lived in.

"Well, if you want to, I'm going to get sushi for dinner with my parents tomorrow. You… could join us, if you wanted to." She was nervous, not sure if he would want to begin rebuilding so quickly. She wasn't sure it was a good idea either, but she was afraid if she lost this moment of good will then they may not get another one any time soon.

"Yeah, that sounds alright." Ron was a little hesitant, not sure if her parents would even want to be in the same room as him, but if Hermione thought it was okay, he had to say yes. Being honest with himself, he would have said yes to anything she suggested at that moment, but wondered to himself _What in the bloody hell is sushi?_

"Great." She smiled sincerely at him before noticing the time on a large digital clock down the street behind him. "Oh no… I forgot I was supposed to meet my Mom over an hour ago."

"Go." He told her, seeing the alarm in her eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, tomorrow…" She leaned in towards him, and was on complete autopilot, almost kissing him on the lips like she had done a thousand times before, but she stopped herself and laughed, kissing his cheek instead. "This is… going to take a while."

"Yeah. Definitely." Ron replied quietly.

She walked the last few paces she needed to in order to get to the alcove she used for apparition and turned to look at him. She smiled, feeling a bittersweet goodness about them and the life she had ahead of her, and disapparated.


End file.
